Crisp Voices Blog

Crisp's Rich Media Ad Support for the Apple iPad

28 Jan 2010 - Xavier Facon

I admit it. I decided to buy that darn Apple tablet before I even knew what it was priced at. I’m as susceptible to Apple’s marketing tactics as the next guy. But am I the ideal audience for this class of personal hardware? As a software developer? As a business person? Not really.

From what I can tell right now, the Apple iPad is the perfect device for those who have lighter computing needs, or will serve as a companion device that covers the majority of your needs outside of the office -- books, magazines, movies, music, email, web surfing, and games. It is a great lifestyle device and Steve Jobs’ pricing strategy makes it clear he wants this to be a device for everyone. The possible competing hardware has a narrower audience. Netbooks for instance, I see more as an economical and light laptop alternative for students and business travelers who need to run PC software. The Kindle and other eReaders are uni-taskers. No, the iPad is in its own class right now. Finally, we have a device for the glossy, full page, magazine style ad experience. We don’t expect advertisers will want to run simple banners here.

Crisp Wireless has been anticipating new classes of devices -- and their new audiences -- as part of our product planning initiatives for Rich Media Ad Unit technology. Our innovative ad unit design concepts and ad rendering scripts work great on Android, iPhone and many other devices. And we’ve done this work to date to fit within the CPU constraints and screen limitations of these smaller super-smart phone devices.

Enter the Apple iPad: Mobile Safari + 1 GHz Apple 'A4' CPU + gorgeous 9.7-inch IPS LCD display. It is a great device for rich media advertising. Both in apps and on the web, the device has what it needs to be fully compatible with our products. Apple decided to leverage largely the same resource efficient operating system for the iPad as what runs on the iPhone. I believe this was necessary to get to the 10 hour battery life. And because our products are well tested on the iPod Touch and iPhone, we can already make accurate predictions about the iPad compatibility.

The following is a summary of the new products and capabilities Crisp Wireless will be offering on the iPad:

Adhesion with expandable and animated rich media advertising for iPad
A broad variety of rich media ad unit templates and components for iPad
Bandwidth sensitive ad units for WiFi and 3G models of the iPad
Great ad engagement metrics and reporting for iPad

Yes, that’s pretty much the same offering as for Android and iPhone, but that’s what we are all about. Our dynamic and cross platform approach to creating mobile software works across multiple devices. We leverage Javascript and HTML5 to its fullest to detect, render and optimize a platform independent end-user experience. And once the iPad ships (with the promising CPU specs of this device), we will be able to push the limit further than ever.

Adobe Flash is still absent from this device and that's too bad. I don't think the argument about the device not having the CPU power to pull it off is going to stick any longer. Without waiting for Apple, we are working to solve this. Stay tuned!

If you have questions about the advertising possibilities on this or any other device, feel free to contact us.

Introducing Adhesion, The First Fixed Placement Ad Technology for the Mobile Web

25 Jan 2010 - Boris Fridman

Today we are launching a new ad placement technology that I believe makes mobile web advertising more effective. On the mobile web, banners at the top of a site disappear out of view with a quick gesture. In mobile apps, ads usually remain fixed on the screen, giving brands greater visibility and increasing the probability of consumers actually interacting with the ad.

With Adhesion, we are able to deliver a fixed placement for ads to a much broader market on the mobile web. Adhesion ads remain fixed “above-the-fold” as the user scrolls up and down the page. As a result, Adhesion brings better brand visibility and viewer engagement for advertisers. Publishers, in turn, can reserve Adhesion placement for brand advertisers and sell adhesion ads at higher rates.

Adhesion ads also offer new ways to measure user engagement and to increase available advertising inventory. For example, with Adhesion, it is now possible to measure the “dwell” time, i.e., how long the ad remains visible, and to rotate multiple ads within the same placement. Both capabilities are not possible with traditional banners.

While delivering greater visibility to brands, we also thought of giving the user greater control.. Adhesion ads come with a built-in menu. The user can close the ad, expand it, or share it via email or social networks.

Adhesion placement can be added to any mobile site. No code changes or special tagging is needed. Campaigns can still be trafficked by an existing publisher or ad network ad server, such DART for example, with Crisp Ad Server delivering the actual ads and insuring the proper adhesion placement. Of course, we support the full complement of Crisp Rich Media ad formats, but we also allow standard MMA banners to be served into the adhesion placement.

Does Adhesion make advertising on mobile web more effective? I am convinced it does. Will more effective ads attract more advertisers to mobile? I hope so.

Check out the video and tell us what you think:

Apps Call, But Will Your Phone Answer? Maybe Not.

14 Jan 2010 - Xavier Facon

I've just read this article "Apps call, but will your phone answer" in MSNBC.com’s coverage of last week’s CES conference. It's a topic which everyone here at Crisp is keenly aware off. This article clearly makes the point that apps work on some phones, but not all. However, in reality the fragmentation issue of app incompatibility is significantly worse than portrayed in that article. It has been around for a long time and isn’t getting any better because there really isn’t any unifying technology that is making much headway.

While industry giants like Google prefer standards, software developers have a self-interest in pursuing new technologies. To compare, one would easily assume it would be better and easier for auto parts manufacturers and car mechanics if everyone drove a car similar engine technology. But the days of the Model-T are over. This is a mature marketplace with (too) many types of cars that are still relatively expensive and increasingly diverse.

Software developers, just like auto mechanics, benefit from the hard-to-achieve and broad skill set they’ve nurtured after years of building apps on multiple platforms. Recent mobile software platform initiatives such as LiMo, Maemo, Bada, WebOS prove that there are plenty of people who don’t think that Windows Mobile, Palm, RIM, Android, BREW, Java ME, and Apple have done enough to complicate matters for developers and content publishers.

Google and most of the mobile advertising industry sees this fragmentation as a big problem. Hence, there is much promotion on Google's part for HTML5 technology. Without having too many delusions about its imminent success, Crisp loves to embrace HTML5, Flash, Javascript and other means to improve compatibility and simplification. At Crisp, we always try to solve the fragmentation challenge instead of splitting efforts by re-writing the same functionality in many different programming environments.

Still, educating content publishers and advertisers that device fragmentation (app incompatibility) is a large problem, has been around for a long time and remains the important truth. Acknowledging the problems while offering solutions to simplify the complexity for them has been one of the tactics Crisp employs to do business in mobile. If you’d like to hear about how we do it, don't hesitate to contact me, or any other mobile veteran here at Crisp Wireless.

5 Predictions for Mobile Advertising in 2010

12 Jan 2010 - Tamara Gruber

Around this time of year you read a lot of posts about what the new year will bring. So we’ve taken out our crystal ball and here are our Top 5 Predictions for Mobile Advertising in 2010:

Android market share will reach 20% of the U.S. smartphone market. With iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry each having significant market share, advertisers will focus all their attention on smartphones in the U.S.
Mobile commerce through apps and ads will become more commonplace as advertisers look to drive ROI and provide a direct link to sales.
Mobile video advertising will gain traction as now over 90 percent of phones support video.
Advertisers will require more than impressions and CTR when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of their mobile advertising.
Augmented reality apps and 2D tag technology will begin to play a role in mobile advertising.