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Mobile social rich media deliver 4x higher engagement rates: report

Mobile rich media ads delivered to social networks have up to a four times higher engagement rate and more than a ten times higher ad content consumption rate than ads delivered to mobile publishers, according to a new report from Celtra.

The report also found that specific features such as location-based features performed significantly better when delivered to mobile publishers. The results show that social media networks have the upper hand in terms of driving engagement.

?Social media is typically seen as a space where content consumption is quick and brief and where advertising has to be simple and easily consumable,? said Matev? Klanj?ek, co-Founder and chief product officer at Celtra, Cambridge, MA.

?The study shows that users are willing to spend more time and are ready to engage with more sophisticated in richer ad experiences when these experiences are interesting enough and offer quality content,? he said.

?A natural propensity to engage with content in social media environment is clearly transcended and even enhanced when it comes to rich media ad experiences.?

Native ad experiences
The study analyzed 32 different mobile rich media campaigns with the same or highly comparable creatives that were trafficked simultaneously to mobile publishers and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

A key factor driving strong engagement results for mobile rich media ads on social networks is the fact that the ads are mostly native, where the ad experiences organically becomes a part of the conversation.

Key findings from the report include that mobile rich media ads on social networks have a 16 times higher ad journey completion rate, a two times longer ad engagement time, a three times higher video play rate and a four times higher social media share rate.

?The study analyzed a wide range of different creatives,? Mr. Klanj?ek said.

?The performance of ads running on social media was exceptional across the board, proving that rich media experiences in social media environment can serve a wide range of marketing goals, from branding, to driving consideration and intent to user acquisition,? he said.

?Social rich media appears to be a successful universal ad product.?

Location-based features
However, these results do not mean that social media is always the better place for mobile ads. Certain ad experiences, such as those using location-based features, may still perform better as standard rich media ads.

The study found that standard rich media ads have a five times higher engagement rate with location-based features and a slightly higher engagement rate with galleries and presentation features.

?Mobile rich media and social media advertising are traditionally seen as two different buckets within the agency universe,? Mr. Klanj?ek said.

?The study shows that combining them makes a lot of sense and expect to see a lot of convergence happening in the future,? he said.

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