Advertising on Mobile Devices

Mary Meeker’s respected Internet Trends report was delivered last week.  One area of focus was mobile internet usage on smartphones.  Mobile internet users worldwide increased 24% from 2013 to 2014, to a total of 2.1 billion users.  And Americans are spending almost 3 hours a day on their smartphones!

With those numbers, companies are looking for the most effective ways to advertise on mobile devices.  They should avoid the temptation to copy their TV ads on mobile platforms.  For effective mobile advertising, consider the following guidelines:

  • Use native ad formats, such as Facebook’s suggested posts or Twitter’s promoted tweets.
  • Ads should be short and simple. Take the context into account: mobile users are looking at a smaller screen and will scroll past your ad if they don’t immediately understand the ad’s message.
  • Use portrait orientation for video. Most users won’t bother to rotate their phones to view video in landscape orientation.
  • Don’t “overproduce” video ads. When an ad is viewed on a mobile device, a slick ad looks very different than the surrounding content and is more likely to be ignored.  Simpler, more direct ads are perceived as more authentic.

Want to figure out the best way to connect to your customers?  Call me at 818-752-7210 or email info at bureauwest.com.

Sources: “Internet Trends 2015,” KPCB, May 27, 2015; “Apple’s ‘1984’ TV Commercial Holds Lessons For Today’s Mobile Video Ads,” AdExchanger, June 1, 2015; “5 Mobile Advertising Best Practices,” iMedia Connection, March 10, 2015; “6 Creative Best Practices for Mobile Page Post Ads,” Business 2 Community, May 27, 2015