I was reading a piece in AdExchanger discussing the need for publishers to first consider technology when planning mobile strategies, and two thoughts came to mind.

First, I agreed that the technology considerations and decisions to be made - from ad serving, to software development kits (SDKs) and mediation layers - are all critical for publishers to reach the goals cited in the piece (managing the user experience, traffic, content, and advertising).

Second, I realized there’s a huge piece missing. Without fundamentally knowing your customers, the mobile technology decisions publishers make could result in “ready, shoot, aim.” Without core, predictive customer knowledge built on data gathered from select trusted sources, how can a publisher, for example:

• Manage the user experience, regardless of whether the user is seeking relevant content vs. executing a task, if they don’t know what the user is interested in or cares about?
• Determine the need for an ad server or demand partner in a mobile environment, if they don’t know the wants and needs of customers from which to select and serve the most relevant creative?
• Drive traffic to mobile websites and increase mobile app downloads and engagement without a clear understanding of who they should be attracting and how they should be personally messaging to them to get them to convert and stay?

So yes, publishers (or any app owner for that matter) face many mobile-specific technology decisions based on user intent and variations in platform features. But, they should begin with the customer first—not with technology. Leveraging data-driven knowledge to build audiences based on tried and true CRM, geo-demographic, and purchase history data is a great place to start.

And now there are data-driven solutions that use mobile technology and actual mobile user behavior, providing an incremental-yet-essential dimension of core customer knowledge. These location-based behavioral analytics solutions uncover real-life customer interests and passions based on the events they attend and the activities in which they participate offline—in the real world.

When coupled with other trusted, relevant customer insight data, publishers can use mobile user behavioral data to make informed decisions on ad servers and demand partners, SDK providers, ad targeting, and other mobile technologies.

Ask us about taking the first step to learning about what your own mobile customers are interested in and care about. We’ll have the answer.