The future of the native mobile experience
The future of the native mobile experience Mike Brooks heads Native Mobile Strategy for AOL Platforms. Based in the NYC office, he focuses on global mobile performance clients, particularly those
Mobile Display Ad
in the app download space. To contact the AOL Platforms team, please email
Experience mimics desktop; is
them at mobile@aolplatforms.com.
designed to be interruptive, living at the top, bottom &
While the rise of mobile device usage in recent years has been meteoric,
occasionally within content.
mobile advertising practices have been slow to catch up. Mobile is on pace to account for more overall ad impressions than the desktop by the end of this year, yet, for too long now, mobile advertising units have remained stuck in the Dark Ages of internet advertising — typified by boring blocks of annoying or (more likely) ignored banners. Fortunately, a new approach is poised to change this: the “native” mobile advertising unit. As the mobile market evolves, this is good news for advertisers who want to increase engagement and deliver more premium experiences to
Native Display Ad Experience seamlessly integrates within the natural look & feel of the page or app where it’s placed.
their audiences and good news for publishers who want to increase yield. In its early days, the mobile industry was content to simply piggyback on the path paved by desktop display advertising. Mobile banners, video, and interstitials were all based on the same tenets as their analogous desktop structures. But app downloads and other types of mobile innovations moved ahead faster than the advertising technology meant to monetize them, leaving the market hungry for more customized, engaging and better performing options. Today, more and more native mobile solutions are entering the market, from Facebook’s App Install Unit, AOL Platforms’ mobile native ad unit, Twitter’s Native Sponsored Text, YieldMo’s in-article solution, and dozens more.1 What eMarketer predicts as a $2.85 billion industry2 this year is a powerful, positive economic indicator of the huge opportunities presented by the future of the native mobile experience.
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The Arrival & Strengths of Native The arrival of the mobile native ad unit is already driving impressive ROI for early adopters. Facebook just surpassed 1 billion users on mobile, and announced in Q1 2014 that 59 percent of its ad revenue is now coming from mobile devices.3 This success is due in part to Facebook re-imagining how people engage with mobile with its App Install unit, which has driven over 25 million downloads across over 3,800 advertisers.4 Early results for AOL Platforms’ new native mobile unit (initially running on AOL Owned-and-Operated properties like The Huffington Post and TechCrunch as well as select third party sites) are showing post-click conversion rates six times higher than those on clicks from a smart phone display banner. While average conversion rates on banners ranged between .8 and 1.2 percent, conversion rates on native averaged between 6 and 8 percent. There are three primary reasons why native advertising is gaining momentum: New ad format Consumers are used to the interruptive nature of standard display ads on the desktop, but in the mobile environment, a rectangular box at the bottom of the page simply doesn’t work very well. Consumers engage with native formats at higher rates and advertisers and publishers alike are getting higher RPMS.
Intentional clicks Clickthrough and conversion rates for native ad units significantly outperform their banner counterparts due to their in-stream nature. Consumers often click on banner ads accidentally when scrolling on their smartphone and tablets (and consequently get annoyed), while native ads enable clicks with a purpose due to their placement.
Optimization Just like its display predecessor, native ads can still be optimized in real time using every possible variable available to give the user the most relevant experience.
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Native’s Evolution The competition is heating up for advertisers looking to connect their app with their target audience. The Apple App Store — the one-stop shop where consumers find, download and immerse themselves in specific brands — recently surpassed one million apps.5 This means that brands are eager for more opportunities to promote their apps. While social networking sites like Facebook offer attractive mobile native solutions, attempting to reach mobile consumers solely via social channels presents limitations. First, social advertising has become increasingly competitive for advertisers and as demand starts to outweigh supply, prices naturally rise. Furthermore, social content narrows placement opportunities for advertisers who want to reach target audiences across a broader spectrum of daily activities — while they are consuming news, sports, financial information and other specific content areas, for instance. Scaling the quantity of app downloads a given advertiser achieves requires diversity among the premium content available for native ads. Pairing the strengths of native advertising with premium content has the capacity to deliver remarkable results for advertisers, exponentially increasing conversion rates and driving scale. Further, extending a solution to publishers who lack the resources to build their own native units significantly increases the publishers’ revenue while also increasing clickthrough and conversion rates respectively.
Travel Advertiser Testimonial An emerging travel app client launched a user acquisition campaign with AOL Platforms in October 2013. The campaign ran across banners, non-native text and text plus image, and utilized HasOffers’ MobileAppTracking solution to track downloads. Later, the client launched a separate campaign utilizing AOL Platforms’ native mobile ad unit. The results were remarkable, leading to a 16x increase in efficiency over standard display campaigns. Most significantly, the advertiser was able to scale the quantity of quality app downloads beyond its previous, saturated primary channel.
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Finance Publisher Testimonial A finance publisher launched a campaign with AOL Platforms’ native mobile ad unit in November 2013, seeking to increase revenue and create a seamless ad experience for both site visitors and advertisers. The campaigns also ran across banners and non-native text and text plus image, and integrated with HasOffers’ MobileAppTracking solution to track attributed downloads. The results were significant. The publisher was able to increase revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) by 61 percent, clickthrough rate by 21 percent and conversion rate by 16x. Conversion rates even ran as high as 14 percent for some advertisers. The AOL Platforms mobile ad unit is now a staple revenue stream for the
Exponential mobile growth over the next year will rest on ad technology enabling every publisher across the mobile internet to harness their own
PUBLISHER CPM
1.1
publisher.
native potential. Imagine what this means from a sheer numbers perspective. If sites and apps globally partake in this 61 percent growth, this adds an additional $4B in revenue for publishers and the ecosystem
.65
STANDARD
as a whole.
6
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AOL'S NATIVE ADVERTISING UNIT
Key Takeaways For Advertisers Creating awareness for your brand’s app is an increasing challenge in the crowded mobile app ecosystem. Embracing native mobile advertising solutions enables advertisers to expose their app to more consumers, by seamlessly leveraging the look and feel of premium content as a valuable asset. New mobile native units give advertisers the opportunity to avoid banner blindness and accidental clicks and give target audiences the means to interact and engage with their brand.
Diverse opportunities for engagement are critical to increasing the scale and efficiency of an app download program. Consumers are constantly shifting from one mobile content stream to another, and as a result, advertisers must broaden their app download campaigns to reach them as they engage in a wide array of activities on mobile devices, significantly increasing scale.
Key Takeaways for Publishers Native advertising can dramatically increase publishers’ non-reserved revenue while improving the user experience. Early results from native user testing show better performance than campaigns focused on simply adding additional display units to the page.
Integrating the native ad format within a single scroll, offering a maximum of three advertiser positions and matching advertisers with relevant content results in higher revenue potential, an increase in advertiser partners and an increase in consumer satisfaction.
1
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/06/google-may-own-online-ads-but-it-still-needs-to-figure-out-mobile-and-its-betting-yieldmo-can-help/
2
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/217000/native-advertising-predicted-to-dominate-digital-i.html
3
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/29/facebook-is-a-mobile-ad-company/
4
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/05/01/3800-developers-bought-facebook-mobile-app-install-ads-driving-25m-downloads/
5
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/01/07App-Store-Sales-Top-10-Billion-in-2013.html
6
Based on eMarketer’s estimate for mobile display revenue in 2014
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About Aol Platforms Aol Platforms is comprised of a massive premium, cross-screen network with 596M global unique visitors, programmatic buying, a proprietary DSP, and network-exclusive access to AOL inventory. Advertising.com enables the world’s top marketers and media brands to reach consumers across desktop, mobile, tablet and connected TVs with impact through premium experiences, programmatic buying and performance driven campaigns. We are the global partner of choice for leading publishers, advertisers and agencies seeking to maximize the value of their online brands. Want to learn more? Contact us at mobile@advertising.com.
About MobileAppTracking MobileAppTracking.com (MAT) created by HasOffers, is one central, unbiased platform for mobile app marketers to attribute app installs, in-app engagement, and purchases back to marketing sources (such as social networks, publishers, and mobile ad networks). MAT is integrated with over 375 major ad networks and publishers along with Google and Twitter. It has been named the 63rd fastest growing company by Inc 500, backed by Accel Partners with Rich Wong, and has more than 150 employees across four offices worldwide, with headquarters in Seattle, WA. Learn more about the product at www.mobileapptracking.com/uk/ or the company at www.hasoffers.com/about.
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