Key Mobile Marketing Trends for 2020
The rise of mobile phone usage is disrupting how people interact with brands across the world. In fact, according to recent statistics on mobile marketing from Statista, worldwide spending on mobile ads is expected to surpass $280 billion globally by 2022. Therefore it’s no surprise that Maryville University’s marketing experts estimate that 19,700 new jobs will open up by 2024 to meet this growing demand. Platforms like social media sites, apps, email, and messaging can directly target consumers with one click of a button, making mobile marketing more popular than ever. To help you get more clicks and increase brand revenue, here are some of the up and coming trends in the mobile marketing world this year:
Sending Push Notifications
If you know the location of your target market, it then enables you to deliver optimized content straight to their mobile device. Digital Doughnut discussed the trend of location-based marketing tactics, which provide targeted content based on your geographical areas, such as specific currency or location-based promotions. For instance, Geotargeting is based on your IP address, most commonly used for entire cities or states. However, geofences are primarily useful for apps that want to direct users to a particular store because they are based on a location’s radius.
Testing AI Voice Search
Among Forbes’ list of 2020 digital marketing trends is artificial intelligence voice search. Through various technologies like Siri, Echo, and Google Home, talking to your mobile and home devices is now becoming the norm, and digital marketers are taking advantage of this. Due to this development, it’s important to adapt your search engine optimization tactics. Adjusting search terms to allow for longer queries with vocal, everyday language should be factored into your future marketing strategies.
Preventing Ad Fraud

Something that the online marketing industry often dislikes to acknowledge is the existence of ‘fake’ clicks on mobile ads. Our reports estimate that in 2020, 44% of all mobile advertising traffic will be fraudulent, as criminals use virtual bots and fake downloads to earn commissions or referral fees. Concerning this issue, we previously discussed how ‘Optimizing eCommerce Product Pages for Mobile Conversion’ can lead to a massive increase in profits. We found that by blocking an average of 30 percent of fraudulent traffic on iOS and Android operating systems, you can strongly boost your user base, cutting out device farming and bot emulators from your system.
Utilizing Video Marketing
Finally, video marketing remains a popular trend that appears to stand the test of time. Business2Community explores how mobile video ad spending is projected to hit $24.81 billion by 2022, making it a crucial part of any brand’s marketing strategy. It’s an intuitive means of getting your story across through integrated audio and visual aspects, targeting consumers of all ages. Currently, they suggest focusing on adding high-resolution mobile videos. Besides, adjusting to vertical video layouts, most suited for avenues like IGTV. However, as time passes, competing pathways and channels will continue to emerge, giving you the freedom of choice to place your content.
The Rise of 5G Technology
Growing access to the 5G mobile network across the globe will change the future of mobile marketing dramatically. It opens up new possibilities, such as the ability to showcase even higher-resolution images, graphics, and display more creativity. Video marketing can be more cinematic in scope and even longer in duration. Interactive aspects can also be integrated into marketing materials and strategies, engaging a greater variety of audiences. For instance, Fortune reports how Verizon is currently focusing on promoting 5G technology, which they plugged during this year’s Super Bowl. In one commercial, they showed “firefighters using 5G technology to obtain visual imagery during a smoky fire.”
Augmented Reality (AR) Becoming More Widespread
Moreover, due to the advent of hugely popular mobile games such as Pokemon Go, AR technology has demonstrated its enormous appeal to the masses. By laying virtual objects over real-world objects, mainly through camera smartphones, augmented reality quite literally allows its users to enter a new and exciting dimension. One ingenious example of this is IKEA’s Place app that allows users to envision what their furniture line would look like in the comfort of their homes, without making impulsive purchases. Users initially have to scan their living environment using their smartphone camera, then can freely overlay potential furniture pieces to their heart’s content. It echoes the playfulness of interior design mobile games, while also promoting a social aspect and increasing brand awareness.
The Popularity of Mobile Gaming
It’s impossible to overstate the meteoric rise of the mobile gaming industry over the past few years. Due to worldwide engagement in esports tournaments, gaming is more popular than ever and attracts a diverse population of players. Medium notes how it is estimated that by the year 2021, the mobile gaming sector will be worth approximately $100 billion in annual revenue. Monetizing this sector through collaborative ads, sponsorships, or in-game purchases is a great way to take advantage of mobile gaming’s highly addictive nature. The freemium model is viewed to be particularly advantageous for instance. By making a game free for players to download, they are more likely to make purchases once they’re more invested in the game.
Furthermore, to summarize, these trends are sure to impact the landscape of mobile marketing in 2020 and the years to come. Therefore, due to the hyper-competitive nature of the marketing industry, you should be prepared to move fast and leverage these breakthroughs to meet your customers’ constantly changing wants and needs. Through exciting advancements in the realm of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, voice search, and mobile gaming, mobile marketers have a lot to look forward to in the next few years. New types of content are being developed daily. So, it’s up to you to ensure that your next marketing campaigns are even more innovative and groundbreaking compared to your competitors.
About the Author:
Ruth Banks is an aspiring writer who enjoys reading and writing about how technology is changing how we operate as a society. These days, she mostly writes about digital marketing, cybersecurity, and social intelligence. This post is exclusively written by Ruth Banks for Interceptd.