RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA: Cable TV has emerged as a powerful message driver for MasterCard in a new cross-marketing effectiveness study, but mobile was a strong number two.

At the ANA's 2015 Social Media Conference, Adam Broitman, vp/senior business leader for global digital marketing at the financial services brand, discussed a research program that had been sponsored by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and carried out by Marketing Evolution.

This had sought to resolve "the impact of mobile on brand KPI sales and determine the optimized percent of mobile in the total mix and assess the role relative to other mobile elements".

Broitman admitted to some initial skepticism. "Because the MMA was sponsoring it, I thought mobile was going to be number one. But when we looked at the study, Marketing Evolution's methodology was irrefutable."

And the number-two standing was a "powerful" statement in the study that included a full range of digital and legacy media. (For more, read Warc's exclusive report: MasterCard generates powerful return on mobile investment.)

As Marketing Evolution reported: "Mobile worked almost twice as hard compared to the campaign average, in terms of the number of people it converted on image per dollar spent."

Digging deeper into the results, the research revealed that "Mobile social was one-and-a-half times as effective as mobile display ads." In the overall audience sample, mobile users were twice as likely to agree with the statement "MasterCard is a good card to carry" than the average respondent to the brand messaging.

And, when Marketing Evolution studied commercial wear-out on mobile devices – what Broitman called "the point of diminishing returns" – the research revealed that MasterCard could have spent nearly twice as much on mobile while maintaining the same level of efficiency.

And what if the brand had doubled-down? "It would have resulted in an additional 7% increase in the image lift that we were looking for."

"The beauty about the mobile device is it's really a great creative pallet," Broitman enthused. "There's so much you can do with it – display, couponing, shopper marketing, mobile video, mobile messaging."

And the message from the MasterCard digital marketer to the ANA audience: "Being irrelevant to consumers in the age of mobile is not acceptable anymore."

Data sourced from Warc