Throughout the month of October, we’ve sparked a conversation around mobile in our industry; we’ve uncovered some of the challenges preventing widespread mobile advertising adoption, and we’ve discussed potential solutions to invigorate cross-screen advertising in the ecosystem. Today, we’ll summarize our learnings and the solutions we’re working on to ease these issues.

Most people know that smartphone and tablet usage has increased drastically in the last few years. These new screens provide a golden opportunity for advertisers to place their brands in front of people through unique and personal experiences. But even though we recognize this opportunity exists, there are still many challenges throughout the industry that prevent the movement of advertising dollars onto mobile platforms.

According to our Mobile White Paper, “Unlocking the HTML5 Opportunity: What’s the Holdup?”:
  • Creative agencies don’t develop more mobile creative because they believe there is a lack of demand from clients, they think re-using the desktop version works adequately and they think building HTML5 is too time consuming. There is also a high switching cost due to the fact that Flash is ingrained in their processes.  
  • Media Agencies don’t buy more mobile impressions because they don’t think there are enough validation metrics from the networks, they find it too difficult to work across network vendors, and the target audiences for tablets in particular are not available.
  • Only 1/4 of agencies build creative specifically for smartphones and only 1/5 build creative specifically for tablets, while 42% of agencies say they reuse their desktop creative on mobile devices.
  • Because creative agencies aren’t building HTML5 creative and media agencies aren’t buying mobile impressions, publishers are unable to monetize their highly trafficked mobile websites with rich mobile ads.




      


To begin unlocking the mobile opportunity, we need answers for publishers, agencies and advertisers, and on our end, we’re actively upgrading our platforms to provide these solutions.
  • To make HTML5 creation easier for creative agencies, we launched Google Web Designer, a free, professional-grade HTML5 authoring tool that provides drag and drop design elements as well as fully editable code. We also launched a number of features in DoubleClick Studio, including tight integration with both Google Web Designer and Adobe Edge Animate, to insure that developers are able to manage and run all their mobile rich media creative through DoubleClick.
  • To make mobile reporting and metrics more available to media agencies, we launched DoubleClick Campaign Manager with built-in mobile capabilities, so even if you don’t target mobile metrics specifically, you can still report on standard metrics (such as connection type, mobile carrier, OS and device) as well as HTML5 rich media metrics (such as avg. display time, interaction time and expansion time.)
  • To educate brands about the need for mobile advertising, we hosted our “Month of Mobile,” to uncover these issues and we provoked a dialogue with our Hangout on Air. We plan to continue this conversation throughout 2014 so that we can incite change and move the needle forward for mobile advertising adoption across the industry.

With continued dialogue and improved solutions, we can reach a point where mobile advertising is second nature to everyone in the industry and brands can take full advantage of the cross-screen presence of consumers today.

Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick