The mobile market is driven by immediacy, and you are often reaching consumers right before they are about to make a purchase. That makes the mobile rich media or video ad a powerful tool for suggestion or persuasion, especially if the location and time are right.
The audience has to be able to see what you’re advertising, which means that your ads might need some changes from desktop to mobile. It’s not as simple as taking your highest performing campaign and adapting it to mobile, although you may find that some elements do offer benefit to you.
What the Audience Sees and Experiences
The Web we use today is dynamic, the sites and applications change size depending on the device and resolution the user is utilizing. Mobile ads also use some different display tactics than what you might be used to seeing on desktop. An ad that expands can work better on desktop, for instance, because the user can still scroll. On mobile, that expanding ad would lock the device and cause a disruption for the user.
Sizes are also different. A 250 pixel high banner takes up a lot of screen real estate on a device with a 5 inch screen. Messaging included on these banners should contain crucial selling points only. You’ll find yourself working harder to balance the image versus text ratio in a mobile ad if you include too much.
Mobile is known for holding user engagement, which is where mobile video ads come into play. Video ads run as a pre-roll to a video the user wants to see, like a product review, tend to hold user focus better because the reward is greater than the cost of time viewing the ad.
Bio: Ted Dhanik, the CEO of engage:BDR, is a passionate evangelist for advertising on the digital media landscape. Ted Dhanik and his team at engage:BDR create technology to serve non-intrusive ads to users who wish to see them. Ted Dhanik is also a prominent guest blogger and direct marketing expert.