Skype on Tuesday officially made mobile advertising a higher priority.
And no one blames them for doing so.
The Microsoft-owned company is introducing a rich media mobile placement for iPhone in select markets and plans to bring advertising to its Android app later this month.
It goes without saying that mobile is a growing area of the Skype business model. One third of the company’s 300 million monthly users access Skype on mobile and the Android app recently topped 100 million downloads.
So far, we can confirm that Ford and Telefónica are the first brands to utilize the rich media units.
Ratko Vidakovic, Director of Marketing at SiteScout, shared his insight with MMW this week regarding what this new mobile advertising power-play by Skype means for digital advertisers, major brands, and the overall tech industry.
“The news is coming at an ideal time,” Vidakovic observes, “as more companies realize that they need to take the mobile experience seriously and implement strategies accordingly.”
“One example is Facebook,” he adds, “who has made significant efforts in the mobile monetization area with news feed ads and another is Twitter, who recently purchased mobile ad exchange MoPub to add more value to their ad platform.”
One of the biggest challenges with the mobile ad experience, up until now, has been the relatively poor experience of the small creative. As a result, brands have been reluctant to dive head-first into mobile just yet.
“This new ad unit introduced by Skype enables richer ad experiences, which should be music to the ears of brands,” Vidakovic concludes.