Airport developer Westfield is targeting travelers with a revolving mobile ad unit showcasing special offers from Dunkin' Donuts and Famiglia.

One of the biggest problems with advertising on smartphones is that the screen size is so small. With the PingCube revolving ad unit from Ping Mobile, Westfield is able to take advantage of the small real estate and push out six different messages with one ad unit.

?The PingCube is a space multiplier,? said Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile, Beverly Hills, CA. ?It allows brands to put the control panel back in the consumer?s hands and allow them to choose how they would most prefer to engage with a brand.

?There are two basic strategies to using PingCube,? she said. ?Brands either use it as a tool to combine all their media and digital channels into one extremely engaging unit or they leverage the PingCube to service consumers at different points of the purchase path and provide content to coax each person to the next stage.?

Airport experience
Westfield is one of the first brands to try out the new three-dimensional revolving cube ad unit. The ad unit powered pops up on top of a mobile site and lets consumers revolve the cube by swiping it around.

Westfield has rolled out the unit targeting mobile users in the Newark, NJ, and Houston airports.

Westfield runs eight retail concessions at airports in the United States, including Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago O?Hare International Airport.

The ad unit will run across Ping Mobile?s network of mobile sites.

Westfield?s PingCube for Houston Airport terminal E leverages each side of the cube for different messages.

For instance, one side presents an offer for free garlic knots at Famiglia. Another links to Facebook, and a third provides 20 percent off at Dunkin? Donuts.

Another side of the cube lets consumers view all promotions for terminal E, and an additional call-to-action links to the terminal?s store directory. The last side links to Duty Free deals.

PingCube
A number of other brands, including a major automotive and food brand, plan to roll out their own PingCubes in the next few months. Some will roll out a rich media cube similar to the Westfield campaign, and others will place an automatically-revolving PingCube within a static banner ad.

By leveraging the PingCube, these brands can all present six different messages via one ad unit.

Instead of having to choose one goal for a specific ad, brands can combine multiple goals into one unit. They can drive awareness, interest, desire and a direct action all within one ad unit. 

This is especially valuable on mobile, since marketers are still struggling to perfect retargeting on the channel.

On desktop, marketers will notice that a consumer placed an item in a checkout basket, but did not convert. The marketer can then push a specific ad to that consumer for that particular item.

On mobile, however, marketers have yet to figure out the perfect replacement for cookies, so the PingCube could be an alternate solution until a more permanent tracking method is established.

With the PingCube, brands can get a better probability of presenting the most relevant message for an individual consumer since they get six chances instead of one. If one message is not as relevant for a consumer, he or she can swipe to another.

?Mobile retargeting has been a huge topic of discussion [because of a lack of cookies],? Ms. Lowy said. ?This is an alternate tool whereby we can still service all stages of the purchase funnel and not in a messy way.

?Putting all the digital channels out there ? that?s important because people don?t realize how low click-through rates are,? she said. ?For every converted click, you had to put so many ads out.

?If you pushed Facebook [as an action] but I don?t have it, you just wasted an ad. Brands should let consumers choose how they want to engage. Everyone can convert in the way that?s most comfortable for them.?

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York