Google enhances mobile display advertising to boost cross-screen branding
Google is stepping up its push into mobile display advertising with new formats and tools as it seeks to address the growing interest in not just paid search but also brand engagement on smartphones.
The news includes a cross-device HTML5 ad unit that is being demonstrated in a Kate Spade holiday campaign while another is a skippable video ad available across the AdMob network. Google?s goal is to make it easier for brands to extend their display advertising to mobile and offer cross-screen campaigns.
?In terms of the mechanics of delivering an engagement oriented ad campaign, I feel that Google now has a very credible offering for brand advertisers that are targeting mobile-first product launches,? John SanGiovanni, co-founder of Zumobi.
?It is not certainly not the first time that they have done brand advertising on mobile, so it not a thermo-nuclear push for them, but it is a very comprehensive and polished offering with a new set of very specific units.?
Kate Spade holiday campaign
The new Mobile lightbox Engagement Ads use existing brand assets to automatically create HTML5 ads that run across devices and screens while dynamically resizing to fit any ad size.
Google built a demo of the new format for Kate Spade's upcoming holiday campaign.
Additionally, the TrueView skippable video ad format, which was originally only available on game apps, is being rolled out across the AdMob network.
?It?s true that mobile devices offer a new canvas for advertisers to connect with consumers, but painting on this canvas has not always been easy,? said Jonathan Alferness, director of product management for mobile display ads at Google, in a blog post announcing the new formats.
?Many marketers started out by shrinking down their existing display ads for mobile, but this didn?t always make for a great consumer experience,? he said. ?They also discovered that frequently their existing display ads were not able to run on mobile devices or on mobile browsers.
?But now, a new generation of display ads is changing how advertisers engage with consumers on mobile devices.?
Auto-resizing
Other news includes an anchor ad format for the mobile Web ad that sits at the bottom of the screen on a mobile device even as a user scrolls down the page.
Additionally, advertisers can now run interstitial in-app ads on the AdMob network with Google Display Network text ads automatically eligible to serve in the new ad space.
The tools being introduced by Google are designed to help brands convert their existing ads into versions that will work across screens and devices.
The auto-resizing tool for the Google Display Network will automatically create new sizes of image ads, including mobile-specific ad sizes.
The Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools for the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Campaign Manager will automatically create an HTML5 version of Flash ads.
There are now 29 HTML5 and in-app formats available in DoubleClick Studio Layouts, enabling marketers to upload their existing creative assets into a pre-built rich media ad template to quickly create ads that work on smartphones and tablets.
Content marketing
While Google?s new mobile display ad units are a welcome addition, according to Mr. SanGiovanni, the bigger trend right now in mobile branding is content, given that consumers are already so used to consuming content on their smartphones.
?Having a full-screen immersive, engaging product-type experience, we haven?t seen tremendous demand for that,? Mr. SanGiovanni said .
?The market is shifting now where brand advertisers are really using the mobile part of their strategy for content marketing,? he said. ?Even around the launch of a new product, they work hard to create long-form content engagement because this has demonstrated much higher click throughs.
?This isn't to say that a thoughtful agency couldn?t figure out a way to bring content marketing into Google?s new formats.?
Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York