GLOBAL: Identifying the moments when people are most receptive to mobile advertising will be a key facilitator of the data exchange economy and will guard against the rise of ad blocking, a leading industry figure has argued.

Writing in the current issue of Admap, David Wright, an innovation specialist at Kantar's global operations, says that mobile is now so heavily integrated into our everyday lives that marketers need to discern what 'mobile moment' someone is in, and then decide whether it's the right one for a meaningful brand interaction.

He outlines research, based on 7,500 people who had clicked on at least one search or display ad over a period of several months, which found that 30% of mobile moments are less than a minute long.

"There are opportunities for brands in these moments, such as price alerts and location-based offers," he says, "but these need to be infrequent, respecting that this person just wants to feel connected."

The data also indicates "a broad sweet spot of three to fifteen minutes where both ad clicks are happening often and the mobile moments in which they sit are frequent".

And during these longer moments – which are taking place across the whole day – a creative agency has time to "frame a big idea expressed through a clever interactive video".

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There is a danger, however, that this can get lost in what Wright terms a "digital haze", as users engage in casual gaming, information gathering, social networking and brief IM conversations, all apparently at the same time.

So, he suggests, advertisers should embrace this state by adding, for example, gamification opportunities, call-for-information buttons or opportunities to join a real-time IM conversation with an expert.

And if they can identify the dominant activity, they personalise still further. "For instance, if the dominant activity of the moment is IM, then the ad's most prominent interactive feature might be the live chat element."

In Kantar's research, communication was the ever present/ dominant activity. It may be, Wright suggests, that "clicks are passé and the real opportunity might be about predicting the best moments to broker a direct messaging conversation between brands and their customers".

Data sourced from Admap