While standard MMA banners may deliver higher click-thru-rates (CTRs) than online, they fail to deliver on the full promise of mobile advertising. This is why more brands are experimenting with ‘beyond the banner’ mobile advertising options and more and more vendors and agencies are innovating on engaging ad units.

When designing a rich media mobile advertising experience, you need to walk a very fine line between engaging the user and annoying them. After delivering some very compelling mobile advertising campaigns for major film studios, automotive manufacturers, and financial services companies, we have settled on some best practices that deliver results that please advertisers and publishers while creating a novel, enjoyable, and informative experience for the consumer.

Best Practices for Mobile Advertising – Full Screen Ads

Full screen ad units are a great solution for brands looking to extend existing campaigns into mobile in a way that makes a big impact. Agencies can take existing, pre-approved IAB standard 300x250 ad units and serve them as full screen home page takeovers or interstitials on smart phones. However, they can also be confusing to a user that hasn’t experienced this type of interaction on their mobile phone before. Some simple steps to take include:

1. Frequency Capping – the first time the ad appears it is interesting, the second, it is an annoyance. You need to frequency cap to limit impressions to no more than one to two a day per visitor.
2. ‘Layer’ the Ad – use a gradient or other creative technique to make sure the site is still visible beneath the ad, so the user doesn’t think they’ve arrived at the wrong destination.
3. Ability to Skip – offer the ability for a user to skip the ad. This is common practice online and intuitive to users if made visible.
4. Time Out – the ad unit could time out after approximately 7 to 10 seconds, so without taking any action the user is still directed to the content.

Using these best practices, we have been serving full screen home page takeovers and site interstitials that deliver upwards of 20 percent click through rates. Mobile advertising is real and it is working. Just ask us.

 The turnout at the recent IAB Mobile event in NYC demonstrated the seriousness with which mobile advertising is being viewed by leading brand agencies.  From my impressions at the show, and reviewing the Twitter stream later, the major themes were “beyond the banner” advertising and mobile advertising effectiveness.

Beyond the Banner
While the dancing dude from the Dockers shakeable ad captured the audience’s attention, an overlying theme of the conference was rich media or beyond-the-banner ads.  In-app and mobile web advertisers are leveraging the power of the smart phone experience to offer ad units like click-to-video, full-page interstitials, location-aware ads, and accelerometer-leveraged ads like the Dockers example. Whether it is the novelty or the interactivity of these ads, it was clear from the presentation, and our experience, that beyond-the-banner campaigns are generating metrics that surpass those of online campaigns.

Mobile Advertising Effectiveness
Another highlight of the panels was Microsoft’s presentation, which shared the results of a recent Dynamic Logic study on mobile advertising effectiveness.  The study showed a 200 percent lift in brand favorability and 140 percent increase in purchase intent.  Medialets also compared the results of an online campaign with an in-app mobile ad campaign and found that online, consumers interacted with the video ad for an average of 12 seconds compared with 42 seconds on mobile.  The Weather Channel, Jumptap, ESPN and others all discussed significant CTRs and conversion metrics on mobile.  

Each of these topics points to the evolving maturity of the mobile advertising market.  ESPN pointed this out best with some fairly strong opinions about the role of premium publishers in selling and delivering these rich mobile campaigns.  Brian Colbert, Director of Mobile Ad Sales for ESPN, felt that mobile has achieved scale and called mobile ad networks premium publishers’ “biggest competition.”  Of course, at Crisp we couldn’t agree more, which is why we collaborate with premium publishers to empower their digital teams to sell mobile and achieve maximum revenues (see our blog post.)

Next up, DigiDay Mobile and ThinkMobile in September.  Going? Send us a tweet and let us know so that we can meet up.