Rich media ads, as we’ve discussed before, have better engagement than basic mobile banner ads, in large part because they hold people’s attention through images, animation, videos and other information. But they’re still only used a fraction of the time, in part because it’s just not easy to launch and manage a rich media ad campaign. Medialets, a New York mobile ad company, is looking to make rich media mobile ads much easier for advertisers and publishers to use by launching a new dashboard and toolkit called Muse, that simplifies the creation, management and analytics of rich media campaigns.
The self-service tool can cut down the creation of rich media mobile ads from several weeks to 15 minutes and can help advertisers, designers and publishers speed their way through the review and management process. If it’s embraced by advertisers, brands and publishers, it could significantly speed up the deployment of rich media ads on mobile. The tool has a number of features including a creative builder and blueprints, which takes successful ads created by Medialets and turns them into templates that customers can easily use to build their ads. The blueprints, which don’t require knowledge of HTML 5, Javascript or CSS to use, can be tuned to drive awareness or increase downloads or achieve other goals. The ads can easily incorporate galleries, videos, 360-degree views and launch actions like mapping and social sharing.
That alone is a big help for brands looking to get into rich media ads. They can just drag and drop their existing assets into blueprints and get something that looks polished but still distinct. Medialets’ campaign manager dashboard lets everyone associated with an ad campaign connect through a collaboration and project management system that charts the progress of a campaign, alerts people via comments and e-mails and helps move along the process of reviews. Once a test ad is created, it can be shared through Medialets’ showcase mobile app, so publishers, brands and advertising agencies can see timely updates in the creation process as they would appear on a smartphone. Muse also charts a number of actions within an app and provides analytic tools for advertisers after an ad runs, so advertisers can know what features in the ad are being used.
Muse’s appeal is in really making the process of ad creation and management dead simple. The tool hides a lot of complexity and works in the background to ensure that ads come together well. This won’t work for brands that are looking to drive a very unique experience. Many of them may still turn to Apple’s iAd or AdMob for custom campaigns. But this could pull in a lot of advertisers who have previously used banner ads but are looking to build better engagement with users with rich media.
“We this is going to help a lot with rich mobile ads,” said Eric Litman, CEO and founder of Medialets. “It needs to get easier to unlock more dollars.”
Mobile advertising is still barely pulling in a fraction of traditional online advertising. While display advertising pulls in $ 10 billion online, mobile ad revenue overall brings in an estimated $ 550 to $ 650 million. But the medium is just getting started and there’s a lot of promise in mobile advertising because it’s very personal and finds people when they’re in a much more intent-driven mode. Rich media, in particular, has a lot of potential because it’s so engaging, allowing people to interact with an ad. There may be some novelty to rich media ads overall, but the early results suggest they’re effective in reaching people. Now, with tools like Muse, we’re likely to see a lot more rich media mobile ads on smartphones.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
- Report: The In-App Advertising Landscape
- Report: New Metrics for the Mobile Ad Market
- Mobile Wrap-up: Q1 2009
