Adobe Adds Mobile App Focus to Marketing Cloud

Pedro Hernandez

Updated · Nov 07, 2013

Mobile apps are keeping users glued to their smartphones and tablets. Adobe noticed and has added new services to its Marketing Cloud to help marketers engage with this increasingly captive audience.

Called Adobe Mobile for Adobe Marketing Cloud, the suite encompasses app analytics, A/B testing capabilities and GPS-enabled audience targeting tools, among other features. Together, these elements can help marketers make sense of mobile consumers, who are increasingly trending toward mobile apps, according to John Mellor, vice president, business development and strategy, Adobe Marketing Cloud.

“With mobile users spending four times longer with their favorite apps than browsing the Web, Adobe Mobile services extends digital marketing into the app universe to help companies deliver and better monetize personalized experiences in this unique environment,” said Mellor in company remarks.

In newly-issued data from Adobe Digital Index, the company noted that on average, consumers use smartphone apps more than twice as often as they point their browsers to the typical mobile website. Users devote 100 more minutes per month to apps than mobile websites, on average.

Tablet users, in particular, like to cuddle up with a good app. “Tablet users spend the better part of a half hour (24 minutes) in an app session, while smartphone sessions are much shorter at nearly 13 minutes,” informed Adobe on its website.

Adobe Mobile is meant to help digital marketers target these app-addicted consumers with features like Geo-Location Targeting, which enables organizations to “offer more personalized user experiences and deliver more effective in-app marketing campaigns,” stated the company. App optimization and analytics tools, including A/B testing support, offer marketers insights into the audiences that are engaging with their mobile apps.

Complementing those capabilities is a new “app-centric user interface” with reporting and data visualization features that provide user engagement, retention and monetization metrics. It also provides cohort, pathing and geo-location analysis. Rounding out the Adobe Mobile offering are a new mobile SDK and privacy-enhancing, Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)-compliant opt-in and opt-out features.

This marks the Adobe’s latest move to chart a ‘mobile first’ course for its Marketing Cloud services slate. In March, the company previewed mobile ad creation and management tools in response to explosive mobile device adoption. “Mobile now accounts for 25 percent of the analytics data we capture each quarter. Marketers must think ‘mobile first’ when developing strategies, campaigns and content,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe Digital Marketing at the time.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Apps Today. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Pedro Hernandez
Pedro Hernandez

Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.

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