Cadillac recently tested several formats of rich media mobile ads around the new launch of a new vehicle to drive brand awareness, with click-through rates reaching up to 2.38 percent.

The campaign ran across a variety of automotive-themed properties encouraging users to click to find out more about the new Cadillac ATS. Several of the units featured interactive elements to draw users into the experience, which helped drive the strong click-through rates, and encouraged Cadillac to move ahead with another mobile ad test that is currently underway.

?Because of the engagement of the ad unit even prior to the click you are getting something from it that a lot of other ones you are not going to get that,? said Katherine Herb, director of sales at GoldSpot Media, Sunnyvale, CA. ?It is going to be a standard a banner standing there alone and it is not calling for any interaction.

?Our outcome from this really shows that we were really drawing the actual user in to the ad unit that was sitting there,? she said.

Interactivity drives results
Cadillac teamed up with GoldSpot Media for the campaign, which was designed to highlight the distinct features of the ATS by driving users to a mobile Web site where they could learn more about the vehicle.

Four different rich media units were tested by Cadillac.

The Full-screen Rich Media unit displayed an interactive interstitial that could be rotated 360-degrees so users could see the vehicle from all sides. Users could tap several arrows or swipe the screen to spin the vehicle around.

This ad unit had a click-through rate of 2.11 percent. The industry average is 0.5 percent, per Ms. Herb.

The Slider rich media ad unit expanded when touched to show a swipeable photo gallery of the Cadillac ATS. It produced a 2.38 percent CTR.

The Rotator rotated to show users different calls-to-action on three different faces for the banner with users landing on different mobile sites depending on which face they clicked on. The CTR was 1.56 percent.

The campaign also included a classic static banner ad.

Each of the units featured a ?Learn More? button that when tapped brought users to the Cadillac ATS mobile site.

Upping the budget
The campaign ran across numerous automotive-themed and news sites including Cars.com, Edmunds, MotorTrend, AutoTrader, Yahoo!, Entrepreneur Magazine, Bloomberg, Forbes.com and USA Today.

Cadillac tested mobile advertising with several other companies at the same time and is proceeding to the next stage of testing with GoldSpot Media and one other company.

The next stage of the campaign will focus on engagement rates and will run for three months focusing on the Cadillac XTS. It will have a bigger budget and will include the ability for users to change the color of the vehicle.

?This campaign is a total brand campaign,? Ms. Herb said. ?It really shows that the engaging units drove a really high CTR.

?All of our units entice the consumers to get involved in the brand or to tap to go somewhere else,? she said.

?We communicated different messages to test what worked bets.?

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