Originally appeared in www.digiday.com on August 15th, 2012

As the debate between mobile apps versus mobile Web rages on, many marketers claim that mobile marketing isn't about messaging; it's about creating value for the conBut mobile marketing is very much about messaging. Certainly, marketers need the ability to message effectively in mobile. While there is little dispute around the efficacy of marketers leveraging apps to support and enhance their brand’s position, the more important question and debate is where best to market in mobile today: mobile Web or in-app?

Marketers have a range of needs, and apps may play an important role based on their unique business model and objectives. However, where messaging or ranges of key performance indicators are concerned, mobile Web provides an excellent, scalable solution.

For brand advertisers entering the mobile space, the medium may have changed, but the fundamentals of advertising have not. As always, brand advertising works best when it is placed in high-quality, contextually and/or demographically targeted content environments. Content is king in advertising, and content, in-context,

always works best for advertisers. You reach consumers when they are in the frame of mind to buy your product.

App marketing has the early lead with most marketers today, driven in part by apps representing such a big percentage of large horizontal ad networks’ available impressions (“Words with Friends” and “Angry Birds” are good examples), creating a misguided impression that this is all mobile has to offer. The mobile Web offers a consistent, simple ad environment for mobile-rich media companies to serve into. Apps, depending on how they are constructed, need to be MRAID-compliant, and app environments, especially on tablets, tend to have variant ad sizes, making scalable serving across numerous apps difficult.

Content with scale is primarily found on the mobile Web. Yes, apps are responsible for a great deal of traffic, but if you look at premium publishers delivering content via an app and a mobile website, the vast majority of the traffic is on the site. The mobile Web is searchable and discoverable, and it’s hard to get people to download and use apps when they can just as easily use a good mobile website.

Publishers are finding that between 15 percent and 25 percent of all sessions originate from smartphones and tablets. As a result, there is a tremendous amount of mobile scale available in some of the most premium and sought-after inventory. Conversely, one must be heavily invested with a publisher brand to consume content using an app; this makes for a good — but very small — audience. Studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of Apple apps go unused within three weeks of being downloaded.

At a macro level, publishers are weighing the costs and benefits of building apps versus creating first-class mobile Web experiences for their audiences. For many publishers, this is an either/or question given current mobile inventory yield. The question is, can publishers afford to support both, and what gives them the most efficiency to build and satisfy audiences?

Mobile Web technology has gotten much better since early, simple list sites. The use of HTML5 allows these sites to be as usable and functional as an app-based content-delivery platform. Unless an app is needed for a specific reason, usually revolving around tool-like functionality (not a great ad environment), a next-gen, high-quality mobile website will serve publishers very well.

We are approaching the point where session starts on mobile devices will equal or surpass traditional PC devices. And the most popular smartphone apps (like Twitter and Facebook) actually drive users to publishers’ mobile sites, further accelerating growth of mobile Web. Publishers will need to focus on driving more in-session engagement, an investment that will create the tipping point in the debate between mobile app and Web.

Tom Jones is CRO for Crisp Media, a provider of premium mobile advertising technology, media and services to brand advertisers, agencies and publishers.

This post was originally published on www.mobile-ent.biz   

CTO Xavier Facon talks to ME about brands' engagement with advanced ad campaigns.

Of all the companies lining up to provide rich media ad technology for brands, Crisp Media may have a claim for knowing most about what it clients are looking for. The firm didn't always specialise in rich media.

It was founded in 2003 and spent its early years navigating its way through the uncertainties of the first generation of mobile content.

Thus, Crisp ended up as a specialist in mobilising major brands, building sites and later apps for big organisations such as NBC Universal, Bravo Media, Hearst Magazines, Hachette Filipacchi and Paramount Pictures.

By 2009 the iOS revolution was in full swing, and Crisp anticipated the revolution this would bring to mobile advertising. Mindful of its vast web of relationships with premium brands, it built a platform for creating rich media campaigns and did a pivot. 

The 'Engage' platform was formally launched in September of that year, offering advertisers and publishers a reporting dashboard to measure campaign performance in real time, and a catalogue of HTML5 ad units intended for use on smartphones and (later) tablets.

These units offered the full range of stuff that makes rich media advertising so much more engaging than static banners, such as:

* Location-aware with tap-to-Google Maps capability

* Scrolling ad units allowing the user to scroll to read text/product information

* Expandable units featuring multiple calls-to-action in the expansion panel

* Inclusion of Twitter and Facebook feeds

* Floating/overlay units offering static placement as the user scrolls

* Tap-to-video/audio 

* Tap-to-iTunes/App Store 

 Within 18 months, the platform had served one billion rich media mobile ad impressions.

In time, Crisp would enhance its tech with proprietary ad units including Adhesion and Capsize. And it would even make an acquisition to enable it to offer its own ad placement network in addition to a tech platform.

The technical lead behind the core Crisp platform was one of the founders of the company, Xavier Facon. He spoke to ME.

Crisp wasn't always an advertising company. How did the switch happen?

We started out building apps for brands, and ended up working with 400 of them. In the process, we realised how difficult it was to work with all the different ad networks they were using. We got a good sense of what worked and saw an opportunity to build rich media technology of our own – and we built it using HTML5 from the ground up.

So since 2010 we've been able to provide a full workbench to agencies and publishers. The system will build, design and serve ads while making sure they are compatible with all the different devices in the market.

How did you come to launch your own network in addition to the Engage platform for building ads?

Well, we were working with clients and it became clear that many of the networks they worked with didn't certify the ads that run across their inventory; they just hoped they will run seamlessly. So we were really looking to ensure we could promote our own campaigns, and we became a tech company that happens to own its own network.

Fortunately, we met with Smart Device Media, and they had similar challenges. Their network was running static ads but they wanted it to be a premium network, and for that they needed to be able to offer rich media campaigns. 

So who do you count as clients now?

We only work with premium brands and publishers, like WSJ and Yahoo for example. It's still a relatively small market, but we all know where it's heading and we plan to stick with it.

How would you gauge the level of awareness of, and commitment to, rich media advertising in mobile now?

There's not a single major agency in the US that's not aware of the potential of the space. And almost all genuinely 'made for mobile' ads are now rich media ads. But it's still the case that a lot of mobile advertising is just an afterthought of online advertising, which is a shame.

The fact is, you can't run static ads on such an engaging and interactive format. It's a waste. There are still only half a dozen that are genuinely advanced and build their own self-service creative ads. That's why we have a creative department, which currently produces around 25 per cent of the output on behalf of clients.

You're very committed as a company, and personally, to the industry standard ORMMA. Why is this?

There are basic things like the formatting for reports that need to be harmonised. Agencies are used to getting standardised reports when using other ad media, so we have to give them the same level of consistency in mobile.

Open standards are important if you want to move the market forward. That's why we work with competitors like Celtra and Medialets to achieve this, and why we helped start ORMMA to find the best integration. The aim is to have one API that ensures the same functionality. 

You developed a couple of your own ad technologies… Tell us about those?

We came up with Adhesion, and it's delivered fantastic results. The overlay ads stick the the screen wherever you scroll to, and it's been proved to perform in some cases eight times better than regular static ads.

We also have Capsize, which eliminates the need for multiple creative sizes by automatically adjusting the width and height of the foreground elements.  

Can you describe a really outstanding ad campaign built on your tech?

We did a campaign with Chevy on the WSJ that was designed to show how much further you can drive with the same fuel. It asked the viewer where they live and then gave them a destination that they could drive to on a single tank. But it actually showed the journey by displaying a map that synced with a video and a gallery. The completion rate on the ad was 80 per cent, compared to a typical 30 per cent.

Mobile devices are all the rage, of course, but still have a relatively low share of advertising dollars devoted to the Web. U.S. mobile advertising spending in 2011 was just 4.7% of total ad spending online, according to eMarketer. However, time spent with mobile phones jumped 30% in 2011, compared with 2010, per eMarketer. “The forward-looking B2B marketers are certainly recognizing this and are viewing this not as nice to do but an urgent to do,” said Jason Young, CEO of Crisp Media, who will take part in a panel discussion on mobile at the BMA’s annual conference. “We certainly are expecting those percentages to increase rapidly.”

BMA Buzz: You will be participating in a discussion at the BMA’s annual conference titled, "From Advertising to Apps to Activation: Mobile’s on the Move in the B2B Mix." What insights will you bring to the table?

Jason Young:  I hope to bring a good perspective on how marketers, publishers and everyone in the advertising ecosystem can benefit from the incredible opportunity that exists in mobile today.  The fact that, as we all know, users are increasingly spending their time and consuming their content via mobile devices — that’s the given in the equation. 

The tougher issue is, how do you take advantage of the opportunity to market to audiences when they are on their mobile devices? What are the technologies and best practices that we can pull from to understand how premium, B2B brand marketers can effectively communicate their messages and drive awareness and consideration of their products and services through these new platforms.

BMA Buzz:  What are the most effective ways that B2B marketers can develop a mobile marketing strategy?

Young: Step number one is just being there.  If we look at the actual amount of marketing dollars, time and resources being put toward mobile — vis-à-vis the audience opportunity — we are way, way out of scale.

Within step two, you have a number of things that you can learn from desktop digital advertising, which is, be in front of the right audiences; be in front of those audiences with high engagement and be in front of them with messages where there is strong share of voice and an ability to capture attention.

BMA Buzz: What are the biggest challenges in building and sustaining a mobile advertising strategy?

Young:  One of the key challenges is building ads that are compatible and will work properly across multiple devices, multiple operating systems and multiple platforms.

You also need to find inventory that is compatible with the creative, so the ad will serve properly. [Another challenge is] effectively measuring how prospective buyers engage with the message and what they are doing with the information presented to them