The following is a guest contributed post from Ross Barasch, Sr. Director of Global Strategic Partnerships at Fyber.
As the mobile industry continues to evolve, new opportunities for advertisers and publishers continue to open up. Similar to the change in web advertising in the 90s, mobile advertising has evolved as the technology has become more sophisticated. High speed wireless access, mobile focused RTB exchanges and beautiful full screen video formats have moved us away from the clunky, text heavy formats not originally built for today’s enhanced mobile browsing experience.
Additionally, the last two years have brought more connected companies into the mobile space, and more cooperation among those companies. Because of this shift, the industry will begin to experience a few things differently. As more companies enter the mobile marketing space, here are a few key trends to watch in 2016.
Viewability: The Mobile Metric That is Here To Stay
As the industry continues to define mobile viewability and fine-tunes its accuracy, viewability will be a key to measuring the effectiveness of mobile advertising campaigns. The consensus in the industry on measuring viewability will lead to new pricing models and a bigger shift to mobile for brands, which need a consistent way to measure success. With the emphasis on viewability increasing, brands and advertisers will start to look beyond simple views as they measure campaign success and invest more heavily in mobile.
Engaging Video Formats will Continue to Dominate
Full-screen, engaging ad formats on mobile devices, especially video, make mobile an attractive opportunity to score highly viewable impressions. Unlike on desktop, these ad formats aren’t competing for a user’s complete attention. Video also allows an advertiser to better measure if and how much of an ad was consumed. This is much more difficult to track on static ad formats, which is another reason why we’ll continue to see brands increase spend on video. In short, video is an engaging ad format that drives measurable results.
Mobile Marketers Will Put Their Creative Hats On
Marketers will strive to deliver unique and immersive mobile ad experiences that resonate with consumers. With the expansion of video advertising technology on our mobile devices, additional products such as “touch-and-feel” ads — meaning technology that lets you feel the image and sensations — will allow advertisers to go even further to create multi-sensory experiences. New ad products that can immerse a user in the ad experience in different ways will bring the industry that much closer to future technologies like virtual reality.
Publishers Will Work with Several Demand Channels
With the increase of advertisers heading to mobile, we’ll not only begin to see publishers work with several different demand channels simultaneously but also see current products, such as ad network mediation, evolve. Mediation is vital to any mobile monetization strategy because it ensures that publishers can work with several competing ad networks directly to optimize their demand.
However mediation is only one demand channel that is complementary to a well-rounded monetization strategy. The influx of new technologies being utilized means that publishers will work with platforms that easily allow them to integrate with several demand channels such as RTB, programmatic exchanges, mediation and direct ad serving to optimize revenues.
Get ready for an exciting 2016, which won’t just be the year of mobile yet again, but will be the year of new mobile innovations, taking our industry to new heights through metrics, opportunities and new channels.
