American automobile brand Dodge leveraged mobile in a bid to entice a new generation of Dodge Dart consumers by using retargeted video advertisements that resulted in higher brand awareness and click-throughs to its Web site.

The car manufacturer teamed up with mobile app-tech company Tapjoy to roll out its Rich Media ad units and Marquee Videos to complete over 700,000 ad engagements and increase brand awareness by 37 percent. To promote the 2015 Dart automobile, Dodge ran ads via Marquee Videos and retargeted users that watched the videos with qualified offers.

?Rewarded advertising on mobile is emerging as a great solution for brands because it works so well,? said Peter Dille, chief marketing officer of Tapjoy, San Francisco. ?A lot of mobile ad formats are under fire because they are not particularly innovative and frankly, consumers find most mobile ads interruptive and annoying. 

?That's a nice way of saying they don't work at all. What's different about our rewarded mobile advertising solution is the consumer actually chooses to engage with advertising because in exchange, they know they'll receive content in their app. 

?And that leads to unparalleled engagement metrics and increased brand affinity for our advertising partners. The key to doing it well is having the ads appear at contextually relevant moments in the app experience.?

Rewarding model
Tapjoy finds that consumers react most positively to the rewarded advertising model because it drives the most genuine engagement with brands that the consumer elects to interact with.

Once Tapjoy determined which users watched Dodge?s video ads, it then offered them the opportunity to participate in Rich Media ads. The ads enabled users to swipe through an image carousel and access images highlighting the Dart?s technology, performance, safety and other features.

Tapjoy?s Rich Media ads allows users to choose to engage with a slew of units such as mini-games, puzzles and 360-degree views that can be combined with actions including requesting a quote, following a brand?s social media site and locating a nearby store.

The ads concluded with a non-incentivized offer to visit Dodge?s Web site to learn more about the vehicle, which resulted in over 30,000 new visitors.

Digital measuring firm comScore, Inc. found that brand favorability was heightened by 42 percent after the campaign, with a 14 point lift in purchase consideration. This is more than three times of the normal consideration.

Over 617,000 videos were watched to completion, leading consumers to interact with more than 76,000 rich media advertisements.

The car brand?s campaign, which was geared toward male consumers ages 18 to 55, saw more than 11.8 million added-value impressions.

Engaging users
Many of Tapjoy?s advertising models offer users rewards such as virtual currency and premium content in exchange for interacting with targeted ads, a feature that Dodge also employed in its campaign. Advertisements are integrated into contextually relevant experiences within mobile apps, and only require marketers to pay for ad engagements that are completed.

Forrester Research conducted a 2014 study that showed consumers appreciate brands that offer content for their apps, and prefer choosing ads to watch. 74 percent of participants also claimed that they are willing to share information in exchange for rewards, with in-app rewards most common.

Rewarded ads were displayed to deliver fewer accidental clicks, proving that consumers react most positively to rewarded advertising.

?Mobile is incredibly important for automotive companies to reach consumers,? Mr. Dille said. ?Auto purchasers go through a very complex process of awareness, consideration and intent before they ultimately make a purchase, and there is no other medium quite like mobile that can directly affect every step of that process along the way. 

?In fact, that process continues on the lot as consumers use their smartphones to research competitive makes and models and, of course, pricing. So not only can an automotive advertiser get their brand in front of the right consumer at the right time and help influence their perceptions, but they can also provide a custom quote and help consumers find a dealer nearby who has the exact car they are looking for.

?Mobile has become an indispensable part of the marketing mix for automotive and we're excited to demonstrate the power of  rewarded advertising to improve results, as we've seen in our work with Dodge,? he said.

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York