Marketers know that building cross-screen campaigns is important to overall campaign success. But many have been slow to adopt the HTML5 standards and mobile-compatible formats that are needed to achieve that success. 

Today, more than 25% of pageviews occur on a mobile device (1) and more people consume content in HTML5-compatible environments than Flash-compatible ones (2), yet 83% of digital creative is still built in formats that don’t work on mobile devices. (3)

The “Make Mobile Work” Initiative
To help marketers make the transition to cross-screen campaigns, we have partnered with the IAB for the past year on the “Make Mobile Work” Initiative. Through an open letter signed by 22 publishers globally, a mobile check-list for marketers, and a quarterly webinar series, we increased awareness of the need for cross-screen campaigns and provided the steps to successfully create, target and measure these campaigns. 

Positive momentum:
Efforts like this one appear to be working. Marketers’ trepidation toward mobile is beginning to melt away, as evidenced by strong growth metrics this year for HTML5 adoption and mobile inventory (metrics pulled from internal DoubleClick data, Nov. 2014):
  • 250% growth in HTML5 impressions in DoubleClick Studio 
  • 130% growth in the percent of DoubleClick Campaign Manager impressions being served to mobile devices
  • Almost half of the mobile inventory available in DoubleClick Bid Manager is now in-app inventory

Three easy-to-use tools for cross-screen campaigns
As marketers begin to incorporate cross-screen strategies into all of their campaigns, we want to make sure that every marketer has easy-to-use tools to help them scale. So we recently launched three new features in the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform that make cross-screen creative, targeting and measurement easy to incorporate into every campaign:
  • Easy HTML5 creative: Our platform will automatically create an HTML5 version of every Flash banner you upload, with automatic Flash-to-HTML5 conversions for reservation campaigns (available in beta for programmatic campaigns). When your ads run on mobile devices, the interactive HTML5 ad will show up instead of a static backup image, helping expand your reach on mobile. You can also report on HTML5 impressions separate from Flash impressions. Learn More>>
  • Precise mobile targeting: For users who opt-in to location-based targeting, marketers can use Geofence Targeting in DoubleClick Bid Manager to deliver highly relevant messages to people based on their proximity to a specified chain store, across a broad geographic area. You can easily target all your store locations with a single click, enabling you to reach the right consumer and drive foot-traffic into your stores. For example, if you’re a hotel company, you can reach people who are close to your hotel, and offer them a discount to get them to choose your business. Learn more>>
  • Re-engage your app users: People are spending 86% of their time on mobile devices in applications. (4) DoubleClick now allows marketers to remarket to existing app customers inside other apps, for both reservations and programmatic buys. Using Floodlight tags, you can create audience lists around any engagement that takes place in-app (e.g. people who added an item to a shopping cart, top spenders in the last 30 days, or gold member app users). This lets you improve ROI by offering relevant ads to people who are already in the purchase funnel. Learn more>>

As 2015 approaches, we hope to see even more marketers incorporate cross-screen techniques, to successfully reach the right audiences on every device. 

Published by the DoubleClick Marketing Team

sources:
1. Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, Apr. 2014
2. StatCounter Sept. 2013 data
3. Internal DoubleClick Data, Nov. 2014
4. Flurry Analytics Report, Mar. 2014