Microsoft is letting advertisers target mobile display ads to handsets that render full HTML sites including those developed for the PC Web.

These phones include iPhone, Android, and full HTML browser Windows phones and Blackberry devices. Targeting full HTML mobile devices is appealing to advertisers because of this audience segment?s increased consumption of mobile media products.

?With full HTML device targeting, advertisers can easily extend their online campaigns to mobile giving them an cost-effective way to maximize audience reach and consumer engagement,? said Raj Kapoor who is our global director of product planning and marketing for mobile advertising at Microsoft, Redmond, WA.

?Advertisers can easily employ full HTML targeting to devices that support these advanced mobile ad units (e.g. rich media campaign), or simply to drive consumers to a more engaging full HTML page designed for mobile screens,? he said. ?This targeting approach is also beneficial to advertisers who plan to employ mobile advertising but have not created a mobile website to render on feature phones. 

?With full HTML device targeting they can extend their online campaign to mobile at no additional costs and still reach consumers who have smartphones (i.e. devices with full HTML browsers).?

Microsoft?s mobile advertising ecosystem across both search and display creates personalized experiences for its advertisers? target audience. Advertisers can also place their marketing messages on MSN Mobile, Windows Live and Bing.

Microsoft recognizes that some advertisers that wish to enter the mobile advertising space but have not yet optimized their Web site to render on feature phones or other less featured mobile browsers. 

Of course, the ideal consumer experience is to create a dedicated mobile Web site for all mobile users, including those with devices capable of displaying sites originally created for the PC Web. However, full HTML device targeting allows them to easily extend their online campaigns into mobile.

Previously, accomplishing this level of targeting required advertisers to keeping an up-to-date list of all the hundreds of mobile devices with full HTML mobile browsers, and then individually target each one of them to a campaign?s targeting profile. 

This feature frees advertisers from the hassle of remembering which handsets are capable of rendering full HTML, and advertisers can now spend less time worrying if they missed any full HTML mobile device and more time optimizing their campaigns, Microsoft claims.
 
?The biggest advantage of Microsoft?s approach to full HTML device targeting is the easy setup and management process,? Mr. Kapoor said. ?We have a simple one-step HTML  targeting process that makes it easy to group all devices regardless of platform. 

?Other ad networks are likely to face a more complex processes because they have to group each full HTML device individually which takes more time and may be prone to errors,? he said.

Click here to read Microsoft's blog post on HTML device targeting.