Digital Media Buzz > AdMob and Greystripe Provide Seamless Ad Campaigns for Clients

AdMob and Greystripe Provide Seamless Ad Campaigns for Clients

By Sheila Shayon

Converting your online-to-mobile ad campaign is no longer an issue, with groundbreaking technology that simplifies the process for just about any application.

DMB recently spoke with two of the top advertising executives in mobile advertising, whose companies have proprietary technologies that enable their clients a seamless transition in their ad campaigns.

“The wall between online advertising and mobile advertising has cracked,” according to Greystripe CEO Michael Chang. The good news for advertisers, continues Chang, “You don’t need to create a separate ad for phones; your Web ads will do just fine.”

Tony Nethercutt, VP of sales for AdMob, “It has only taken about three years to get to an audience size of more than 50 million monthly users in the U.S. alone. To give you a sense of how rapidly mobile has grown worldwide over the past two years, AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests in September 2007; a year later, in September 2008, we had 5.1 billion; and in September 2009 we received 10.2 billion requests. Today mobile advertising is a very vibrant and competitive space.”

Greystripe is serving image-driven display ads, as opposed to search-targeted text ads. These rich media ads are meant to be watched and/or played, which is unlike Google ads. Google’s ads aim to engage search engine users to click through and buy something, or click through to another site supported by yet more ads. “They are deterministic ads that show up in apps or games consistently — they do not pop-out or pop-up and catch a user by surprise in a disconcerting way. These ads, paired with free content, are a trade off the consumer is willing to make,” Chang says.

For AdMob’s Nethercutt, “It’s less about the mobile platform and more about reaching the right audience and using the media well. Is the amount of copy legible to get the value proposition or call-to-action clearly across to the user? You can’t ask a consumer to fill out a 45-page questionnaire on auto insurance on their mobile phone.”

Greystripe has developed proprietary technology that allows the delivery of rich media ads to mobile platforms. “It’s a decompilation of a Flash file - breaking it apart and then building it back in a different configuration,” Chang says. The company’s software development kit (SDK) serves up three specific ad formats:

• GS.Engagement Ads: Any existing IAB 300X250 ad can be used in a standard full screen placement.
• GS.Impact Ads: Taking a IAB 300×250 Flash creative and place it seamlessly into the full mobile screen.
• GS.Tailgate Ads: This format combines the engagement of advertainment with the reach of Greystripe’s network.

AdMob’s proprietary technology was built from the ground-up specifically for mobile. “We chose expertise over retro-fit and designed ad servers that look at information attributes and decide the best ad and the best time to serve that ad to the proper audience,” Nethercutt explains.

AdMob Case Study: Land Rover
“AdMob drove 73 percent of traffic to Land Rover’s mobile site with 40 percent of the mobile advertising budget. Highlights from Land Rover’s mobile site engagement rates include:

• 45,000 video views
• 7,400 custom wallpaper downloads
• 128,000 Gallery Views
• 5,000 dealer lookups
• 800 brochure requests
• 1,100 click-to-calls.

“More recently,” Nethercutt says, “Autoweek promoted their iPhone app by placing ads in its magazine and running a mobile campaign with AdMob.  Before the campaign started, their application was not ranked. However, by the end of their U.S. mobile campaign, the AutoWeek app had broken into the top 25 list of iPhone apps overall.  An international mobile campaign followed, with the app climbing inside the top 10 within the news category in the U.K., Canada, and Australia.”

Greystripe Case Study: Burger King
Their Burger King campaign, the objective being to increase brand awareness and Burger King’s Flame perfume resulted in:

“13.9 percent of users interacted with this GS.Tailgate ad,” Chang says. “Users spent an average of 16 seconds interacting 167 percent lift in top-of-mind awareness of Burger King.”

Chang ultimately sees digital-to-mobile advertising as convergent platforms, with smart phones as ’small computers,’ and thus no need for different brand faces by platform as used to exist in traditional brand advertising.

Greystripe’s biggest surprise in the process of moving Web ads to mobile is, “the intuition on click through is way better than ever imagined, .1 percent with banner ads, and 2-5 percent with mobile,” according to Chang. “Same creative, but full screen with free content added and the usage is 10-20 times better.”

AdMob’s learning curve includes working with creatives to show that “you couldn’t stuff it all in,” Nethercutt explains, “and getting advertisers to understand that traditional Web banner ads take a large percentage of real estate - still smaller than online, but less copy equals a larger call-to-action. This led to the creation of expandable touch banners that are clear and concise, enabled by the iPhone.”

Greystripe’s internal mantra: “It’s all about the format.” Asked about the particular skill set for mobile entrepreneurship, Chang quickly quipped, “Diet Coke and coffee.” And then expanded to: “It’s a cross-discipline skill set that combines detailed knowledge of software systems at the decompilation level, as well as the large-scale understanding of ad servers and application architecture.”

AdMob stays focused on “Understanding who is the audience we are creating for, what’s the motivating business reason and ad monetization model. It’s a multiple skill set that balances credibility on the technology side and with advertisers.”

Ad Mob’s pending $750 million acquisition by Google secures its future on the edge of mobile advertising.

As for Greystripe - the future holds endless possibility.