You’ve probably heard a lot of people extolling the virtues of “Mobile Rich Media Advertising,” but you may still be wondering just what the heck it actually is. Depending on which sites you visit or which blogs you read, “rich media” may start to sound like some arbitrary buzz word used to describe whatever the person selling it wants it to.
Luckily, “Mobile Rich Media Advertising” does have a standard industry definition—it just happens to be very, very inclusive. Courtesy of the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association):
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“Mobile Rich Media Advertising is an interactive and/or non‐interactive ad unit displayed on a mobile web page and/or in a mobile application that offers one or more of the following:
- Inclusion of streaming video content or animated GIF within the ad unit
- Inclusion of sound
- A richer interactive feature set than basic mobile click‐through. This interactive feature set includes user interaction that occurs through input other than a “click” or “tap” (i.e. use of the gyroscope, accelerometer, camera, microphone, GPS, etc.)”
Like I said, it’s a pretty inclusive definition. For my money, it’s honestly easier to define mobile rich media advertising in terms of what it’s NOT:
Unlike mobile rich media advertising, static media just consists of a banner ad that re-directs users to an external website.
A static, postage stamp-sized banner that clicks-through to the brand’s website (which may or may not even be optimized for mobile devices). These are “Static Media” ads, and they represent the cheapest, worst-performing possible version of mobile advertising.
“Rich media,” on the other hand, refers to pretty much any campaign that does more than this. For example:
Mobile rich media advertising involves expandable ads, multimedia content, and mobile functionality like touchscreen & GPS
(Check out some more examples of mobile rich media advertising at FunMobility.com
3 Reasons Why Mobile Rich Media Advertising Is Better
- Performance
- Functionality
- Fraud Prevention
Performance – Not surprisingly, ads that do more stuff tend to generate better audience response. Moving images are more eye-catching than static ones, and interactive ads are naturally more engaging than non-interactive ones. Mobile rich media advertising sees an across-the-board performance boost, especially for the automotive and education industries. According to Millennial Media, rich media ads in these verticals show 3.5x better click-through rates.
All verticals see a performance boost from mobile rich media advertising (image courtesy of marketingcharts.com)
Functionality – Rich media not only offers the consumer more diverse functionality (touch screen, GPS, camera, etc), but the advertiser as well. A deeper feature set within the ad unit equals deeper analytics, and greater insight into your audience demographics, preferences, and behavior. Rich media ads can capture registrations, map specific location data, drive social share, initiate a phone call for instant connections—or align with pretty much any marketing and advertising goal you can think of.
Fraud Prevention – Like I talked about in this earlier post, online advertising fraud is a major problem for this industry (with more than a third of all web traffic being reported as bogus). But, while it’s easy for fraudsters to program bots to rack up false impressions and clicks, it’s virtually impossible to make bots that can exploit the more sophisticated interactivity found in rich media ads. This makes rich media a great way to identify suspicious activity: just look for publishers delivering a ton of clicks to your display ad, but no engagement with the rich media layer.
Related:
Mobile Advertising Arms Race: Rich Media Outgunning Banner Ads
6 Best Practices For Rich Media Mobile Ads
Go Gustom: FunMobility Introduces Custom Mobile Rich Media Advertising