Tag: mobile ads

How Stonyfield Used Location-Based Ads To Target Pokémon Go Players

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Stonyfield Farm becomes the latest brand to jump in on the Pokémon bandwagon as it devised a clever location-based ad campaign to reach Pokémon Go players. Working with Aki Technologies, a San Francisco-based mobile ad firm, the yogurt brand is serving up ads that specifically target Pokémon players at over 10,000 U.S. PokéStops, real-world checkpoints where players travel to in order to receive free in-games supplies. The ad copy reads “time to catch a Stonyfield,” and links to a store-locator on Stonyfield’s website. Aki’s ad network serves the ads via popular apps consumers often use while playing Pokémon Go, such as weather and messaging apps.

What Brands Need To Do
This campaign is an interesting workaround for Stonyfield to leverage Pokémon Go’s exploding popularity to reach mobile consumers without actually sponsoring any in-game features. Since its launch, Pokémon Go has scored 75 million downloads worldwide, making it the most successful mobile game ever. The companies behind the game have been cautious toward opening up the game for sponsorship, but when it launched in Japan last week, McDonald’s appeared as the first sponsor for the “gym” locations in the game.

One notable limitation of this campaign, however, is that Stonyfield’s ads are only guaranteed to appear within five minutes of players visiting a PokéStop, whereas in reality people typically stay at PokéStops for less time. Regardless, this campaign is still an innovative case of location-based mobile ad targeting and should serve as inspiration for brands looking to connect with Pokémon Go players.

 

Source: AdWeek

Google Updates AdWords To Better Serve Mobile Advertisers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google has updated its AdWords service to add a few mobile-friendly features. One noteworthy update is the addition of expanded text ads, which grant search advertisers longer headlines to draw in customers. The existing text ads will continue to be available until Oct. 26. Other updated features include separate device bidding and responsive display ads for native inventory. Google started rolling out the features to marketers around the world on Tuesday.

What Brands Need To Do
Google has been making several efforts lately to improve its mobile ad products as it extended AMP support to ads and landing pages, launched “Showcase Shopping” ads that cater to mobile shoppers, and added new ad formats to its AMP pages. As Google continues down this path, brand marketers need to be mindful of new features and leverage them to deliver a better mobile ad experience. And since the standard text ads won’t go away until October, brands can use this window to run some A/B tests of standard and extended text ads to figure out the optimal length for their ad copy.

 

Source: Search Engine Land

 

Teads Enables Brands To Buy 360-Video Ads On Popular Sites

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Teads, an online ad marketplace that handles the video ads on sites such as Mashable, The Guardian, and Forbes, has added support for 360-degree video to its inRead toolkit for advertisers. This addition allows brands to buy this immersive video format on those popular news sites to reach a wider online audience with 360-degree content.

What Brands Need To Do
As popular platforms such as Facebook and YouTube have started to support 360-degree video content, the vieo format is gaining momentum among mainstream consumers. But compared to regular video content, 360-degree videos are not as easy to produce, and the ad network infrastructure for 360-degree video is still in its infancy. Therefore, early adopting brands should consider giving Teads a try to amplify the reach of their existing branded 360-video content. For other brands, we suggest working with content creators to build up a library of branded VR content to engage with their audience.

 

Source: The Drum

Google Speeds Up Ads And Landing Pages On Mobile With Extended AMP Support

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google announced on Tuesday that it is extending its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) product to support mobile ads and the landing pages they link to. Marketers will be able to purchase AMP-powered ads programmatically via Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager. Google introduced AMP last October as a response to Facebook’s Instant Articles, which also promises publishers faster mobile loading. According to Google, web pages built with the AMP format load 85% faster than standard mobile pages.

What Brands Need To Do
Compared to Facebook’s tight control over advertising in Instant Articles, Google seems to be more willing to work with ad tech partners and marketers to support ads in AMP pages. Now by extending the AMP format to ads and landing pages, Google is giving advertisers a valuable tool to deliver a faster, leaner mobile ad experience to consumers.

 

Source: DoubleClick Advertisers Blog

Snapchat Adds “Suggest Account” And Develops Ad Product Powered By Image Recognition

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has quietly added a way for people to spread the word about the accounts they love. Along with the recent addition of Memories, users can now easily recommend friends follow other accounts by tapping the new “Suggest” button on profile cards. Users will receive suggestions as private messages with an account info card and a button to follow them.

In other Snapchat news, the company is reportedly developing a new ad product powered by image recognition technology. The idea is to use that technology to identify real-life objects that users have snapped, for example a can of diet soda, and surface related ads and coupons in other Snapchat channels such as Discover and Live Stories.

What Brands Need To Do
Snapchat has long been a hard nut for brands to crack because the app does not have a referral-based discovery system, making it difficult for brands to grow their followers. With the Suggest feature, brands gain a useful tool to ask their fans to spread the word and grow their fanbase in an organic and, if they’re lucky, viral way. The new image recognition-powered ad product, if realized, should provide brands a valuable targeting tool to run their Snapchat campaigns. As Snapchat grows more prominent in the social media landscape, brands need to keep up with brand-related developments of the app and learn to leverage them to their benefit.

 

Sources: TechCrunch & Business Insider

Major Publishers Join Blis’ New Location-Based Programmatic Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
London-based location data company Blis unveiled its private programmatic marketplace Blis Prime on Tuesday at the Cannes Lions Festival. Designed to help brand advertisers ensure their ads are geographically relevant to their audience, the new product will supply advertisers with performance data, measured by analytics firm Moat, to determine whether their ads are being served in the right places, at the right times, and viewed by real humans. Condé Nast, The Times, and Forbes are among launch partners for this programmatic platform.

What Brands Need To Do
Location-based ads are very useful for businesses to target local consumers with relevant messages and drive store visits. With more and more people consuming digital content on mobile devices, it is imperative that brands advertising on mobile take context into consideration as well. In that regard, brands may find it beneficial to explore this new platform and see how it can help boost ad effectiveness.

Location-based mobile advertising was also a hot topic we encountered at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, which you can read more about here.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

Facebook Canvas

Facebook Now Allows Brands To Use Canvas For Page Posts

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook launched Canvas ads in late February, enabling brands to extend the fast-loading speed they get with Instant Articles and rich media support to their mobile ads. Starting Tuesday, the social network is also allowing brands to use the interactive format for organic posts on their Pages. Canvas posts can include text, auto-playing videos, photo carousels, and even panoramic photos. According to Facebook, users have spent 31 seconds on average in a Canvas ad since the format’s launch.

What Brands Need To Do
By making Canvas widely available for Page owners without requiring ad buys, Facebook is no doubt trying to lure more brands into trying out this relatively new ad format so that they will be convinced of its advantages for ads, too. For brands, the extended availability should come as a welcome tool that they can leverage to create fast-loading, rich media content on Facebook to fully engage with their followers.

For more information on how and why brands should try out Facebook Canvas, click here to read our Fast Forward analysis on the ad product.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Google Introduces New Ad Formats To AMP Pages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google is adding support for three more ad formats in its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), including fast-loading “AMP Ads” that load as quickly as the pages, “sticky ads” that stay atop or at the bottom of pages regardless of scrolling, and so-called “flying carpet ads” that reveal their content as users scroll past them. Google launched the AMP project in October last year as a response to Facebook’s fast-loading initiative Instant Articles, and it has since added support for more ad tech platforms and promised publisher partners more control over the ads in AMP pages.

Why Brands Should Care
These new ad units should come as welcome additions for AMP publishers as well as brands looking to advertise on these publishers’ mobile properties. Compared to Facebook’s relatively tight grip on ads in Instant Articles, Google may just win over more brands and media owners with its ad-friendly approach, provided that they be careful to not let the ads get in the way of the user experience. With more and more people consuming content on their smartphones, marketers need to be conscious of the choices they have when it comes to mobile ads.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Now Showing Ads To Non-Users, Testing Shoppable Video Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to take strides toward challenging Google for the top spot in online advertising as the company started to serve ads to non-users on Thursday. Previously, Facebook’s ads on third party websites or mobile apps, powered by the Facebook Audience Network, would not be visible to users that are not logged into Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, the social network is using a mix of cookie tracking, its own buttons and plugins, and patterns within its massive user database to help advertisers target non-users with more relevant advertising.

In related news, The Information reports that Facebook is working on shoppable video ads, which will allow users to buy products highlighted in videos on Facebook. One tap on an item featured in a buyable video would reveal more information about the product and another tap would send users to the retailer’s website to complete the purchase. Facebook has not confirmed nor denied this new ad product.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook has long enabled its Audience Network to reach users outside of Facebook properties, and this change should help advertisers reach even more people across various digital platforms. As Facebook continues to expand its advertising machine, it is important that brand marketers heed the new ad products that Facebook offers and leverage Facebook’s massive reach and targeting capability to connect with their targeted online audiences.

 

Source: TechCrunch & The Information

Facebook To Sunset Desktop-Based Ad Retargeting Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has decided it is time to shut down its desktop-based ad platform Facebook Exchange and move advertisers to its mobile-first advertising products. Facebook Exchange was launched in 2012 to enable brands to retarget Facebook users based on their website viewing habits, and it had a good run in the first few years. But now that the majority of Facebook users are accessing its service on mobile devices, Facebook Exchange no longer holds the prominence it once had. Facebook says it is aiming to fully migrate clients and ad tech partners to newer products by November 1st.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook reported that users spent fifty minutes on average each day across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger platforms, and about half of them only use Facebook on their smartphones. Given the immense command Facebook has over online advertising with its 1.65 billion monthly active users, brands would be smart to follow its lead and transition their social marketing efforts onto mobile-first products.

 

Source: AdWeek