Mobile – Page 5 – IPG Media Lab

How To Keep Up With YouTube’s New Vertical & Spherical Video Formats

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Lab Team

What Happened
YouTube has been making strides in expanding beyond the traditional horizontal videos in the past few months, adding support for new video formats, such as mobile-originated vertical videos and VR-derived 360-degree spherical videos. This week, YouTube further integrates the new formats by allowing full-screen vertical video viewing in its Android mobile app, as well as adding support for 360-degree videos to TrueView video ad platform, part of Google’s AdWords products.

What Brands Should Do
These two new formats are slowly gaining legitimacy as they incorporate viewing experiences native to the mobile and VR devices across platforms, which in turn can lead to better ad performances. For instance, Snapchat claims that vertical video ads are viewed completely nine times more frequently than horizontal ones, while YouTube reports that 360-degree videos can “deliver higher levels of consumer engagement than traditional video ads” with the added interactivity. Brands and marketers need to start experimenting with these new formats to keep up with the evolving digital video landscape and tailor content for the mobile-first consumers today. Don’t be the last content producer forcing users to use two hands to view your content.

Update 7/24: YouTube has updated its iOS mobile app to add support for vertical video fullscreen display as well.

Source: The Next Web & Marketing Land

Fast Forward: How You Can Leverage Live-Streaming To Reach A Wider Audience

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Lab Team

Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.

New features from Meerkat make live-streaming collaborative and more interactive

Brands can sponsor others’ streams or have celebs “Cameo” in their own stream to increase reach

Storage option makes evergreen content possible

What Meerkat Announced
Meerkat has announced a new update that brings several interesting new features to its apps. Besides Facebook log-in and a cloud-based streaming storage, the highlight of the update comes as a new “Cameo” feature that allows live-stream hosts to invite another Meerkat user to take over their stream for up to one minute.

What Brands That Produce Video Content Need To Do
Brands that produce monetizable content and brands that produce video for content marketing can capitalize on this change. The new features change the type of content suitable for Meerkat in a big way. Meerkat is now making it easy for brands to get involved in streams with a wide reach as a Cameo, e.g., by buying time on an influencer’s stream. Also, brands can leverage a Cameo from a celebrity to reach a bigger audience, spice up their live streams and generate buzz, as that celeb brings their audience with them, either live or for evergreen content.

Several marketers have already begun using the new feature, including The Weather Channel, TMZ, Fox, CW, Mastercard, and YouTube star Michelle Phan. Even scripted and serialized content are possible on Meerkat now and the long term storage options will create opportunities to build an audience over time.

Market Impact
Locked in a tight race with Periscope, Meerkat has been actively branching out to new territories to differentiate itself from its Twitter-owned rival. In recent weeks, it has expanded to Android, as well as forging partnerships with cable networks like Discovery and CMT to diversify its content. This update shows Meerkat’s continued efforts in differentiation, and it looks like it is ahead of Periscope, for now at least.

For More Information
Please contact Engagement Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) at the IPG Media Lab if you would like more detail or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your feedback will help us immensely.

Images courtesy of Meerkat

Twitter Makes Push For App-Install Ads

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Lab Team

Ad units designed for pushing mobile users to download apps has been one of the hottest ad products recently. According to BI Intelligence, US mobile app-install ad revenue was $3.6 billion in 2014, accounting for about 30% of mobile ad revenue last year, and it is estimated to top $4.6 billion in 2015. So it is understandable that the major tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter are all locked in a tight race pushing for ad-install ads on their respective ad platforms. Among them, Facebook seems to be leading the game so far, with Yahoo being a close second.

And now, Twitter is making some extra efforts to make its app-install ad product more appealing to mobile advertisers. It will add videos to app promotion ads so mobile users can see how the app works in action. More importantly, Twitter will soon start charging only for the apps that are fully downloaded, instead of the current industry standard of clickthroughs. Together these two new options offer mobile advertisers a more visually impressive and fairly priced ad unit for driving app downloads, which could just be what Twitter needs to become a contender for the mobile ad dollars. It will also make the decision to advertise on Twitter easier as advertisers will only pay for success and will go in with the knowledge that Twitter is incentivized to make sure these ads perform.

Source: AdAge

POV: Targeting Tribes Through Tech

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Lab Team

People have always connected over shared interest, forming unique relationships over similar passions. What was once limited to physical proximity has expanded into fan communities online. Constant connectivity has made it easier for people to connect, forming strong, loyal fandoms whether they know one another or not. In this POV, we discuss how brands can utilize technology to target these fandoms, or tribes, and message to them in an authentic and transparent way as a means to leverage brand equity.

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Click here to download and read our newest POV as PDF.

Yahoo Catches Up With Google With Actionable Mobile Search

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Next Web

Yesterday, Yahoo announced a new partnership with Oracle that aims to prompt users updating Java software to set Yahoo as the default search engine. And Today, Yahoo follows up its efforts in pushing Yahoo Search with a revamp mobile search results page that offers richer content and quicker access to take actions. For example, a search for a specific restaurant now pulls up relevant info about the restaurant, as well as yelp reviews, all designed to be directly helpful in the context of specific queries. Of course, this is nothing really revolutionary—Google has been doing that for years now—but it is a smart move for Yahoo to catch up and put mobile search first, especially now that mobile search usage has officially surpassed desktop.

Why Apple Blocked Third-Party Apps From Scanning For Installed Apps

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Information

Apple has blocked app developers from accessing that app-download data for ad targeting purposes as part of the company’s continued crusade to appear more privacy-friendly. This means that third-party apps like Twitter or Facebook can no longer scan your phone to learn about your interests and mobile behaviors from the app you installed. Apple has been increasingly tightening its control over iOS ecosystem—just last week it added support for ad-blocking extensions to iOS 9. Now with this access to app-scanning revoked, mobile advertisers will have to find new way to gain insights into consumers’ mobile usage.

How Brands Can Tap Into Smartphone Sensors For Better Targeting

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Lab Team

Nowadays, our smartphones and wearable devices come with a ton of smart sensors that not only tracks biometric data for fitness purposes, but also environmental data that can help contextualize our surroundings. The new Google X wristband, for example, can gather environmental information like light exposure and noise levels, in addition to the myriad of biometrics it monitors. Similarly, popular weather app Dark Sky has recently started tapping into the barometer embedded in iPhones to crowdsource pressure data for better local weather forecasting.

For brands, however, the next step is transforming these sensors from passive data receivers into active data gatherers and utilizing them to generate accurate, hyperlocal data to improve context-aware targeting. Sense360, for example, is a California-based startup that specializing in the gathering and interpretation of environmental data from the various mobile sensors. Just earlier this week, they launched a new software development kit (SDK) that will allow app developers to easily access the sensors and help brands deliver a better consumer experience.

All in all, sensors hold vast potential for real-time contextual triggering, enabling brands to reach their audience at the right time and place. We expect more brands to start tapping into the data they generate, and make good use of the new targeting capability they present.

Tinder Claims Over One In Five Users Swipe Right For Brands

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Lab Team

Read original story on: AdWeek

As the most popular dating app, Tinder has attracted a fair number of brands that wishes to woo young, single consumers active on its platform. Our POV on dating apps detailed some prime examples of Promoted Profiles, which allows advertisers to create “dating profiles” for brands. If users swipes right on those profiles, brands will be enabled to send them more content via chat messages.

Tinder has rarely revealed any of the stats regarding its ad offerings, but Sean Rad, co-founder of Tinder, just claimed that over twenty percent of users swiped right on brand profiles, and that this engagement rate remains consistent throughout various campaigns. Rod also mentioned that the average user spends 11 minutes a day swiping and texting through Tinder.

While the authenticity of these numbers would be difficult to verify, there is no denying that fractured mobile users are increasingly consuming media content on new platforms. Therefore, brands need to go where the audience is going, even if that means an eighty percent “left-swipe” rejection rate.

Why Google Acquired Mobile App Streaming Platform Agawi

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Earlier this week, Google confirmed its rumored acquisition of Agawi, a platform that allow mobile users to stream apps over the web without downloading them first. The reason behind this seems clear—Google has much to lose if the current trend of user moving away from mobile web into apps continues, given that the majority of Google’s revenues from web searches and the accompanying ads. In fact, out of the $66 billion total revenue Google generated in 2014, eMarketer predicts it $38.4 billion is from search ads.

The timing of this confirmation came at an interesting juncture, as both Facebook and Apple have announced in past few weeks new initiatives that aim to keep users inside apps in which they can easily monetize. Apple even went one step further last week by allowing ad-blocking extensions for Safari in the upcoming iOS 9, which would effectively cost Google a considerable amount of ad views. Therefore, it makes sense for Google to attempt luring users back into mobile browsers with a web-based app streaming platform. The battle to take control of mobile ecosystem has only just begun, and all marketers need to be aware.

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