EBay takes the mobile banner ad to new heights by showcasing several icons that tip off viewers to what happens when they tap and encourage engagement from consumers familiar with smartphone shorthand. 

The banner ad appears at the top of Huffington Post?s mobile news feed and promotes the retailer as a holiday gift-shopping destination. Icons representing video, Instagram and photos are prominently featured in the right hand corner, letting viewers know that by tapping on the ad, they will have an opportunity to engage with all three types of content. 

?When creating an ad unit it is important to make sure that the ad is reflective of what the consumer will see on the landing page,? said Shuli Lowy, marketing director for mobile at Ping Mobile. ?Since mobile banner ads are small it can be difficult to communicate the full scope of what?s ahead. 

?Icons are a great way to give consumers an explanation of what lays ahead of the ad without overcrowding a banner ad with text,? she said. ?EBay?s use of icons explains to consumers what they will be brought to post-click using visuals instead of text.?

?Leading consumers to an aggregate of images provides a nice change of content from the traditional commerce pages that retailers send consumers to. The ad campaign is clearly focused on using the visuals as the gateway to commerce?aggregating images from eBay?s Instagram account.?

Boosting banner ads
Banner ads on mobile are notoriously small, challenging marketers to decide what information to include. At the same time, users find the banners difficult to read and uninviting, resulting in low engagement rates. 

Marketers have tried a number of ways to make banner ads more enticing, such as by using animation. 

EBay and Huffington Post are taking a different route and trying to capitalize on the growing use of a emoji and other digital pictograms that serve as a shorthand for smartphone users, who are often on the go and looking to quickly and easily communicate on a small screen. 

For example, the past year has seen emoji use explode both with consumers and as a marketing tactic, with a number of brands creating their own emoji to try to insert themselves into the conversation that is happening on social media. 

The icons for video, photos and Instagram are also fairly well recognized as they are often inserted on sites to let users know what kind of content is available. 

Content is king
Viewers who tap on the eBay banner ad see a full-screen experience pop up that does not require them to navigate to another site. 

In this experience, there is a big box in the upper portion and a row of smaller boxes along the bottom. Tapping on one of these lets the users queue up different content in the bigger box. 

Users who tap on the video icon can then navigate through several different videos in the big box. 

Other brands have used this Huffington Post format previously, although the inclusion of Instagram content does seem new. 

When users tap on the Instagram box, they see images and text from the brand?s Instagram page. 

Igniting Instagram
The integration with Instagram is interesting because users are expected to navigate away from a site in order to engage with social media content.  

?The landing page experience remains within the app which provides higher and longer engagement rates,? Ms. Lowy said. ?Consumers who are in middle of reading an article are generally not fond of leaving that page. 

?Generating a social follow directly can therefore be difficult,? she said. ?The social following needs to be done through a verified account or one which is already logged into. 

?That often means that the consumer would end up leaving to the Instagram app or brought to the Instagram sign in page if they aren?t already signed in on that browser.  Instead, the Huffington ad unit allows consumers to experience the images as an overlay, providing a smooth gateway for readers to weave in between ad and news content. Consumers can get an idea of what the brand?s Instagram account is like before leaving the news experience to follow the brand on Instagram.? 

Overall, the ad is a good example of how brands and publishers are focused on improving the mobile advertising experience. 

As consumers become increasingly comfortable with smartphones and the different types of shorthand used to communicate information on their small screens, such as emoji and icons, marketers are likely to make better use of them.

?Although the user experience flow to get an Instagram follow is slightly cumbersome, it ensures that people who follow the account truly like the content and are therefore more qualified followers,? Ms. Lowy said. 

Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York