The Top 3 Innovations in Mobile Video Advertising
Innovations include customizable interactivity, dynamic ad stitching and live streaming.
Innovations include customizable interactivity, dynamic ad stitching and live streaming.
In the last couple of years, mobile video has quickly become a valuable advertising medium recognized by major brands and top publishers as a key to digital success. Taking a look into the recent past, a few innovations have had an especially significant impact on mobile video’s rise to fame. These are the three that stand out as pacesetters for the continued growth of our industry.
1: Fully Customizable Interactivity Options
Mobile video interactivity used to be a tad on the boring side — a small, often colorless button asked users to tap through to a landing page so consumers could learn more about the brand’s products and services. Sometimes there were no buttons at all, with the entire ad acting as an interactive hotspot.
Given that interactivity is the major feature that separates mobile video from television, getting interactivity right can make a big difference to brands trying to engage viewers beyond the initial ad impression. Asking viewers to click just isn’t enough.
Luckily for brands, significantly better engagement technology exists, helping brands garner higher completion, engagement, and even conversion rates. With fully customizable ad experiences featuring thousands of options beyond the little gray button of yesteryear, advertisers can harness the power of everything from unique calls-to-action — including social sharing and device response activities like accelerometer integration or tap to add to calendar — to branded dynamic overlays and interactive end cards. This allows brands to create more holistic ad experiences, making the interaction both more meaningful and more deeply integrated into the brand experience itself. The options are vast and can be tailored to meet the needs of most campaign objectives. With a creative mindset, the latest in interactive technology allows for just about anything — and it’s only getting better.
2: Dynamic Ad Stitching
Not the newest of innovations but certainly one that keeps improving, dynamic ad stitching is what’s responsible for delivering a seamless mobile video viewing experience similar to that of TV. With video files being delivered at over one megabit per second, viewers experience little to no lag time and fast, no-buffer downloads. In this on-demand ad-serving environment, dynamic ad stitching allows for real-time targeting. Unlike pre-caching, dynamic stitching makes it possible for publishers to serve different ads to different viewers based on specific attributes, all within the same content. Already used for contextual targeting, this technology will come in especially handy as new targeting technology becomes widely available.
3: Live Streaming for Mobile Video
A recent mobile video innovation that is still in its infancy, mobile live streaming will open up millions more impressions and will eventually change the very nature of how we watch sports, music, and other live events. With the technology now available to stitch ads dynamically as both pre-roll and mid-roll placements in live mobile video content, the opportunities are vast. Publishers can monetize increasing amounts of live content, allowing brands to align fully with important sports and music events, while driving more relevant viewing experiences for the consumer.
These three innovations have not only catapulted mobile video into the spotlight, they are driving it toward the mainstream. These, as well as innovations in targeting and content syndication, signal the growing maturity of the mobile video marketplace.