Video and Mobile for brands

Everybody in the tech scene is saying that 2013 is the year of mobile and I find that to be true in video as well. Since the beginning of the year we’ve already had 80% of our clients at Brainient ask for mobile demos of our interactive video ads.

We’ve been running interactive mobile video campaigns since 2012, and we’ve already seen serious uptick this year. But there are a few problems with mobile and video that brands and agencies should consider when planning their interactive video campaigns:

1. Mobile ad delivery standards are not fine-tuned. The main standards for delivering interactive video ads on mobile are MRAID AND ORMMA and Brainient supports both of them, but they’re not fully baked and often have issues (mostly in terms of tracking impressions, clicks, engagements, etc). Make sure whether results stack up right after you start the campaign.

2. Personalisation matters. What works online doesn’t necessarily work on mobile. We’ve had campaigns at Brainient that performed incredibly well online but poorly on mobile, because they were too “heavy” in terms of execution. We’ve also had mobile campaigns that outperformed the online version by an order of magnitude. Mobile interactivity needs to have a life of its own, not just be a replicate of its online version.

3. Make sure the media owners set the campaign properly (and support MRAID / ORMMA standards). Video ads on mobile is still quite a new concept and most media owners (think: apps & websites with mobile traffic) treat mobile video ads as display banners. That’s wrong, and you’ll have issues in tracking the right events. Ideally, do a test before signing a new mobile media owner.

All in all, with the right creative execution and the right audience targeting, we’ve seen mobile campaigns with stelar results in terms of brand recall and brand engagement. But it’s not as straightforward and easy to execute as it is online so make sure you get the right partner on board ;).