The 4 Smartest Moves for Your Mobile Marketing Dollars In 2015 Whether you're playing catch up with mobile or trying to pull ahead of competitors, investing your ad budget shrewdly is key.

The significant growth in mobile marketing/advertising over the last five years has proven that the mobile channel represents the future of the industry. Analysts now estimate that by 2017, mobile will account for nearly 49 percent of the entire digital media spend.

With $31.45 billion spent in 2014, and even more predicted in 2015, a business without a mobile marketing/advertising strategy is falling behind and missing out on valuable opportunities to connect with consumers and bring in revenue.

There are a handful of innovations that have come to the forefront of the industry that can give you a leg up and help you achieve your desired results. This is where your mobile dollars should go in 2015.

1. Make video a priority.

A survey conducted by Animoto earlier this year revealed some pretty telling statistics about consumers and video. An eye-opening 73 percent said they were more likely to purchase a product or service if they can first watch a video explaining it. Companies utilizing video also appeared to better connect with consumers, as 71 percent agreed that watching a video produced by a business left them with a positive impression of that business and their services, while 58 percent said companies with videos appeared more trustworthy.

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The numbers speak for themselves. Video is now a huge part of what consumers are seeking when they are on their mobiles devices, and where consumer eyeballs go advertisers need to follow. In fact, according to a recent study mobile video revenues will top $4.4 billion by 2018, representing an astonishing 73 percent growth rate since 2013. The same study revealed that desktop video ad revenues are only expected to grow by 13 percent during the same time period.

Considering the prospects, no brand or content owner can afford to miss out on an opportunity of this size,

2. Converge mobile, social, and content strategies.

Mobile now represents approximately 65 percent of a typical publisher's web traffic, yet most do not come close to generating the same level of revenues via mobile as they do through their desktop websites. Further, the current monetization offerings for mobile websites and applications fail to generate the scale of opportunity most require to build a robust business strategy, so you need to think outside the box in order to create more opportunities that engage consumers in a mobile first environment and eventually, bring in more money.

One way to accomplish this is to eliminate the silos that exist between your mobile advertising, social media and content strategies to create an integrated approach and allow them to instead work together. This enables each channel to do what it does best -- content for enhanced mobile first engagement, social for amplification of the messaging and mobile for easy access to a broad audience at scale -- while working more efficiently to expand monetization opportunities across all of the channels.

This approach is also designed to better take into account how your customers consume, interact with and share content when they are on their mobile devices, and translates into greater revenue opportunities for your business. Done correctly, this could also save sizable dollars in media investments by aligning paid (mobile media), owned (content) and earned media (social) strategies for better campaign performance.

Your consumers are combing all three channels in their usage, so you should too.

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3. Programmatic buying.

As the shift to more digital media channels continue, advertisers will increasingly turn to programmatic buying and management platforms. This automated way of purchasing ads helps to better manage costs at scale, increase transparency of where your budgets are spent, and enables real time decision-making. Think of it as buying ads as if you were shopping online for anything else.

Already in 2014, major advertisers such as P&G and Unilever have announced their intention to accelerate their programmatic spending, with P&G saying it wants to buy 70-75 percent of its U.S. digital media programmatically by the end of 2014.

While programmatic platforms are currently far from perfect, analysts estimate that mobile programmatic ad revenues will account for nearly 43 percent of all U.S. mobile ad revenue by 2018. This would represent more than $10 billion. Don't be on the outside looking in.

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4. Native ads.

No one likes having their browsing disrupted by an ad that takes up the screen and prevents you from doing what you were doing – playing a game, reading an article or shopping. Native ads integrate with the flow of the user experience on a site or an app, and have become a popular tool for social and mobile marketing as an alternative to more disruptive ad types.

Millennials, in particular due to their use of multiple screens, are most sensitive to this and are rejecting ads that take them away from their activity. A creative approach to target consumers without traditional advertising is crucial in order to capture and sustain your audience's attention. For example, rather than a popup ad in a mobile game that halts play, an advertiser can offer a branded reward to players within the game in an organic way for completing a milestone.

Integrating content closely with mobile and social media strategies can be a giant step in the right direction. Consider how you prefer to view content and ads – chances are your audience isn't much different.

Mobile is going to be a crucial piece of the marketing/advertising pie for businesses of all sizes over the next few years as consumers increasingly utilize personal devices. By keeping your strategy flexible and up-to-date with the latest innovations, your business will be well positioned to cash in.

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