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.
 
 

Mobile Marketing & the Challenges that Lie Ahead

Stop Arguing about Flash vs HTML 5 and Let's Move Mobile Advertising Forward

3 May 2010 - Xavier Facon

 Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and many other leading Internet enablers are now all involved in an active debate on how to move forward with content authoring in the multi-platform world.  The launch of the tablet device has prompted an escalating discussion on the merits of technologies like Adobe Flash versus Object C and HTML5. It has taken ridiculous proportions.  While it didn’t bother anyone initially that smart phones often don’t support Flash, with the launch of the Apple iPad, many were starting to question why.  I wrote a blog post on the lack of Flash on the iPhone about a year ago but Steve Job’s comments recently have really exposed the issue in a different light.

Apple has turned from reluctantly allowing content authored with 3rd party technologies like Flash on their mobile devices, to Steve Jobs doing a hatchet job on Flash.  He provided justification for that in an open letter which revealed his passionate dislike for technologies which aren’t native to his own platform.  I'm not buying every technical concern he has about Flash, but I'm not suspecting him of being disengenuous neither.  I do believe however, for Apple to not give the consumer and the developer the choice to use Flash is clearly a business model issue.  Some companies like to allow publishers, advertisers and developers to author content once and distribute them on many platforms.  Other companies - like Apple - require native development on their platform, so that content is only available on their own market leading platform. 
For apps from the App Store, Apple forces developers to use Apple's Objective-C based Cocoa API, a native and proprietary platform. Until recently, developers could also program in Flash and re-package it in Objective-C before submitting it to the App Store. This is now not allowed anymore, but the alternative Objective-C is still practical enough.  
However, for content on the mobile web, Jobs makes the impractical suggestion of using the W3C defined open HTML5 standard as an alternative for Adobe's proprietary Flash. That would make a lot of sense, except no one has any tools for developing similar content with the nascent HTML5.  Adobe Flash is many years ahead and, after carefully reading the technical specifications of both Flash and HTML5, I’m wondering if HTML5 will ever be able to match the level of expression that the author can achieve with Flash.  This is a challenge that authors of web based rich media like video, games and advertising have to deal with now.

HTML5 is a specification for video (H.264), vector animation (canvas), interactive logic (JavaScript) and layout (CSS/HTML).  Adobe Flash also covers video (FLV), vector animation (FLA), interactive logic (ActionScript) and layout.  Aside from the video part which can automatically be converted (be it with some loss of functionality), the other parts of these technologies are absolutely not automatically convertible and aren't even comparable due to vast differences in sophistication.  Flash is far better with animation, while HTML5 is far more efficient in simple content layout.  It has been surprising how many opinions are published where that critical fact is omitted. (Including Steve Jobs open letter)

What About Mobile Advertising?
Crisp Wireless has made the bet that Flash would be too slow to come to mobile in order to be a practical technology for mobile rich media advertising.  We have invested in developing a compelling framework for designers of ad units that leverage HTML5, without requiring the designer to program. Using HTML 5, we are enabling advertisers to use a single technology to deliver compelling ads across the broadest range of platforms. Using Crisp's ad building blocks, the designer can simply and easily create mobile rich media ads. Individuals interested in experimenting with the beta version of this technology are welcome to contact us –end mandatory plug.
As for mobile devices from Apple. The debate is now over. Even Adobe has cancelled their Flash initiatives on iPhone. However, Adobe will keep improving their mobile Flash technology and will find plenty of platforms, including Android, that won’t reject their technology in the near future. Apple will require developers to give their mobile devices special attention at the expense of standards that publishers and ad agencies are familiar with today.  Here at Crisp Wireless we are investing in products that can bring that cost down and make the process to run more compelling display advertising easier on all leading mobile platforms. Our HTML5 strategy is part of that, but we're working to support Flash on Android as well.

 

Attn. Publishers: It’s Time to Sell Your Mobile Ad Inventory

6 Jul 2009 - Tom Foran

I wrote an article recently for MediaPost’s Online Media Daily called Field of Dreams II: The Mobile Advertising Story that was seen by some as slamming mobile ad networks.  On the contrary, mobile ad networks play an important role in the mobile advertising ecosystem for remnant inventory.

The underlying point of this article was to call out premium publishers who are relegating their mobile sales strategy to ad networks instead of selling premium inventory to their own advertisers.  In our discussions with premium publishers, many have expressed their dissatisfaction with the way some ad networks transparently represent their inventory and they are expressing a desire to sell this inventory direct through their existing digital sales team.

So if you are a publisher with scale (>1 million page views per month), think twice before you hand over your inventory to mobile ad networks.  Don’t be satisfied with $1.00 CPMs.  Empower your ad sales team to sell mobile, in particular rich, beyond-the-banner ads.  These ad units generate excellent CTR and user engagement and sell for much higher CPMs.  

Still need a push? Crisp provides end-to-end services to make selling, buying, and tracking mobile advertising simple and easy.  We are industry leaders when it comes to mobile ad serving, rich media ad forms, reporting, robust advertiser sites and collaborative (not competitive) sales support.

What are your thoughts? Leave your comments here or on my article, looking forward to hearing what you have to say.