Google (News
– Alert) has introduced new mobile display formats and tools for advertisers that will be rolled out over the next few months. Spanning Google’s advertising properties including the Google Display Network (GDN), AdMob Network and DoubleClick (News – Alert), these improvements aim to improve user experience and allow advertisers to run more effective mobile campaigns on browsers and apps.
As part of the major update, Google is offering four new types of display format that are optimized for mobile devices with a variety of sizes and operating systems.
Engagement ads support rich media and use HTML5 responsive technology to automatically resize ads to the user’s screen size. This type of ad will soon be available for GDN campaigns, and advertisers only need to pay when a user interacts with it.
TrueView ads are designed for video campaigns and are similar to the ones found in gaming apps and on video sites such as YouTube (News – Alert). They will be available as part of the AdMob Network. The user has a choice to watch or skip the ad, but the advertiser is only charged if the entire video is viewed.
Anchor ads stick to the bottom of the screen in a mobile Web browser and goes along as a user scrolls up and down the page, but there is an option to close it if it’s in the way. This is a more traditional method of mobile advertising, but has demonstrated satisfactory results and is now more optimized for variations in mobile devices.
Magazine text style ads are intended to harbor premium-looking designs, such as those found in magazines, and fill up the entire screen. These appear at logical points during one’s browsing or app experience, much like those found in many gaming apps, and can be closed out by the user at will. These are already available for mobile websites via the GDN and now will be on the AdMob (News – Alert) network as well.
The transition into these new mobile-optimized ads will be understandably difficult for advertisers, so Google has also launched three new conversion tools to ease the transition.
An auto-resizing tool automatically generates new ad image sizes that are appropriate for mobile devices on the GDN, and a Flash-to-HTML5 converter for the GDN and DoubleClick Campaign Manager eliminates the problem caused by some devices not supporting Flash (such as iOS devices). There are now 29 HTML5 and in-app formats in DoubleClick Studio Layouts, which Google describes as, “a tool that lets you upload your existing creative assets into a pre-built rich media ad template to quickly create rich ads that work on smartphones and tablets.”
These new formats and tools promise to improve mobile advertising campaigns and generate more positive results for the advertisers as well as Google itself. The company also recently stated that it is overhauling how ads are displayed in order to improve click-through rates. These are especially important moves considering the recent launch of competition from Facebook (News – Alert) and Apple with Atlas and iAd, respectively.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle