Crisp Voices Blog

Dealing with Fragmentation in Mobile Advertising

23 Aug 2010 - Tom Foran

The digital agency 360i recently came out with a new report titled “Mobile Marketing and the Challenges that Lie Ahead” (embedded below), which spells out, pretty accurately, the challenges facing mobile advertisers. I’d specifically like to address the Fragmentation issue.

Back in the day, big brands were worried about creating a mobile presence for the thousands of handsets, browsers, and operating systems that abounded in mobile. In more recent times, these same brands have been focused on just one device – the iPhone – and mostly building an app, or for some, a mobile site for that device. With the growth of Android, the introduction of the iPad, and the growing number of smartphones accessing standard online content (see Xavier’s post for more on this,) fragmentation is again an issue.

According to 360i:

“Fragmentation will be one of the more persistent mobile marketing challenges. Which devices and operating systems are used by your target customer base? How does your audience divide their time across various mobile channels? How can you find them across a jumbled array of publishers and ad networks? How do you develop enough creative units that work across all the devices included in the media plan?”

Sounds like a bit of a roadblock, right? Not necessarily – here is where Crisp comes in. Crisp’s ad formats work not just across mobile platforms – like iPhone, Android, and iPad – but also across channels including mobile applications, mobile optimized websites, and standard Internet sites. Using our ad components, you can create ads like full screen expandables with hotspots, tap to video, tap to find location, and more that will run across all these channels. We’ve partnered with over 700 premium and local sites and apps to pre-certify these ad formats--so rolling these out across the entire media buy is seamless.

360i also pointed out the challenge of monitoring data from yet another stream. We help out here too. Crisp can provide a holistic view of the entire campaign – across sites and apps. And I’m not just talking about click-thru rates (CTR). Everyone knows that if you are serious about mobile advertising, you need to measure ROI not just by CTR but through interaction and engagement. Our rich media engagement metrics include Panel Interaction Rates, Display/Dwell Time, Video Plays and Completion Rates, and more.

I believe that the entire mobile industry will benefit when there is less fragmentation and when one creative can run across the entire set of sites and apps in the media plan. That is the problem we are solving. One creative + one set of reports= more satisfied agencies and advertisers and ultimately in larger repeat buys.

So don’t let the challenges in mobile advertising impede your campaigns. Talk to our experts to see how rich media vendors like Crisp have solved these problems, and we’ll provide some tips on some of the other challenges 360i points out too.

360i Report:

Mobile Marketing & the Challenges that Lie Ahead

How to Improve How Your Online Ad Campaign is Viewed on Mobile

19 Aug 2010 - Xavier Facon

It is estimated that on average close to 4% of online page impressions for desktop formatted web pages is actually viewed on iPad, iPhone, Android-based and similar mobile devices. That portion of traffic is also quickly increasing.

However, the user experience on mobile devices and tablets is different, and as a result online ad campaigns displayed on those web pages get compromised. Sometimes the ads don't fit on the screen, or when users zoom and scroll to the content they are most interested in the ads either disappear or become pixilated. So what can be done to improve the value of this 'lost' inventory?

The first step to solving the problem is to segregate traffic from mobile devices from that of desktops and laptops. Advertisers should target smart phones and tablet devices with different ad units versus desktop and laptop computers in their ad server. Most ad servers don't offer support device targeting so you can setup an external banner with a JavaScript tag that bounces back to an ad server that does. <shameless plug> Crisp Wireless' Ad Platform is designed specifically to support such capabilities.</end plug> Also to that purpose, DoubleClick most recently announced an upgrade to DFA to support the targeting of regular desktop banners to specific mobile platforms. This is definitely a very timely announcement for advertisers who use this product.

Another very important aspect to improve the effectiveness of campaigns viewed on mobile devices is the ad format itself. Advertisers should use alternative mobile ad formats that adapt to the zooming and scrolling behavior on touch-screen devices. Crisp Wireless invented the Adhesion ad format which stays on part of the screen at a pixel perfect resolution regardless all the zooming and scrolling. Crisp also focuses on providing an easy workflow to agencies and publishers to manage the design differences between mobile and desktop platforms while building rich media ad units and embedding video content.

When using Rich Media ad units from Crisp, all engagement metrics are available in one easy to understand report, which is properly calibrated to provide accurate stats from any mobile platform or desktop browser.

To conclude: It is possible to better leverage the mobile traffic to an online ad campaign when some fairly basic issues are addressed in the setup of the ad units. Our team at Crisp is addressing these issues in new and innovative ways. Contact them and they will tell you all about it.

Popular Mechanics iPad App Launches with Interactive, Full Screen Ads Powered by Crisp Wireless

13 Jul 2010 - Tamara Gruber

The Popular Mechanics iPad application launched recently featuring full screen rich media ads for Infiniti, Stanley-Bostitch, History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers, Trane, and TakeMeFishing.org. These campaigns include full screen interstitial ads, served between content pages of the Popular Mechanics iPad app. The Crisp-powered rich media creative features multiple interactive hot spots to click for further product details and includes embedded videos that can play in full-screen view.

Watch an example of the Stanley-Bostitch ad for the Anti-Vibe hammer:

Crisp Wireless ad for Stanley in Popular Mechanics iPad app from Crisp Wireless on Vimeo.

The Crisp Mobile Ad Platform enables publishers and agencies to easily create, serve, manage, track and measure mobile rich media advertising campaigns. The platform includes an extensive catalog of rich media formats, mobile ad serving with third party tracking support for publisher-side ad servers, and detailed engagement reporting to track impressions, interactions, conversion events and video play rates and completions. With the launch of these campaigns, Crisp has added iPad support to allow true cross-platform delivery across devices, sites, and apps, making it easier for agencies to utilize creative across a wide variety of devices and content.

Learn more about the Popular Mechanics iPad app: