Mobile platforms are clearly doubling down on imagery to enhance the user experience and attract big advertising dollars. This was evident in Facebook?s introduction of new ad units, Instagram?s new Explore page and Snapchat?s partnership with WPP. 

?If you read the tea leaves on this week?s major stories, it tells you a lot about treads in the market,? said  Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile, Toronto. ??Seamless narrative? are the two words that jump out at me. 

?Whether it is Facebook?s new immersive creative ad units that allow the user to explore deep into the product horizontality, vertically and now even immersively with 360-degree imagery or Instagram?s Explore page and Snapchat?s agency partnerships,  they all show the appetite for content storytelling and narrative,? he said. 

Here are the biggest platform developments from the past week for mobile marketers and their implications:

Facebook reportedly meet with advertising executives at the Cannes Lions Festival last week, positioning new ad products that promise an immersive experience as competitive with TV and magazine ads. 

The social media giant ? and already the second biggest mobile advertising platform ? said it is developing an experience with rich imagery and 360 views. The interactive, branded destinations appear in the news feed and include full-screen video, product information and other content. 

Consumers are already spending a significant amount of time on social media from the smartphones but advertising, to date, has mostly been a flat, lackluster experience. If Facebook can, in fact, deliver on enhancing the experience, this could help attract some of the big budgets that currently go to TV advertising. 

Photo-sharing platform Instagram made a play for greater real-time relevancy and hopes to improve on Twitter?s expertise in this area with a more visually driven experience. 

The platform?s new Explore page ? initially only available in the United States - enables users to see trending places, such as popular live events and nearby happenings. Users can also view curated collections of images pulled from popular feeds. Trending hashtags will also be highlighted. 

Instagram is also introducing a new search engine globally, giving users the ability to search for places for the first time. 

Instagram?s goal with these moves is to provide users with a visual experience related to their interests and current events which is more efficient than TV. 

Google introduction of an ad-supported free music streaming service further cements mobile?s role as the device of choice for listening to music and is sure to attract advertisers. 

This space is getting quite crowded as this point, especially with Apple?s offering set to launch soon. While it seems likely there will be some consolidation at some point, marketers are likely to continue to experiment with the current offerings to see where they get the best traction. 

Last week, mobile agency Mobext ? which is part of Havas Group - announced a global partnership with Shazam, along with ad network Mobile Network Group. Additionally, media conglomerate WPP, in collaboration with DailyMail and messaging app Snapchat, announced Truffle Pig, a joint content marketing venture that will combine agency, newsroom and social media capabilities. 

The two pieces of news point to the growing importance of the most popular mobile apps for reaching consumers. An important takeaway for marketers is that if they are not already experimenting with reaching consumers via the big apps, it is time to jump in before rates start going up. 

In a sign of the growing importance of messaging apps, Facebook is enabling consumers to sign up for Messenger with out an account on its social network. 

The move is further indication that Facebook has big plans for Messenger, which recently added peer-to-peer payments, new location sharing options and other new features that start to remake it as the kind of broad-based digital platform that Snapchat, Line and others are also evolving into.