Crisp Wireless blogs

Volkswagen Revs the Engine on Multi-Site Ad Campaign for Volkswagen CC using Crisp Wireless

tamara — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:22:46 +0000

To promote the new Volkswagen CC, Volkswagen tapped Crisp Wireless to power their rich media mobile ad campaign. The campaign is running across a range of mobile sites and applications for CBS, CNN, Jumptap sites and others.

On the Web, Volkswagen's mobile ad units are powered by Crisp's proprietary Adhesion ad placement technology. Adhesion ads remain fixed 'above-the-fold', providing the maximum view time and opportunities for engagement for premium brands. Adhesion ads support the full gamut of Crisp's interactive rich media components. Volkswagen's mobile ad campaign takes a full throttle approach to rich media mobile advertising by leveraging interactive on-screen hot spots, location-aware capability, tap-to-video and ads that expand to full screen.

Publishers can easily add Adhesion to their mobile sites using the Crisp Ad Management Platform. No change to the mobile site is required. In recent A-B testing, Adhesion has already proven to be twice as effective as standard mobile ad banners. View the Crisp Wireless Adhesion video on YouTube here:http://www.bit.ly/advideo.

The ad is also running in the TV.com iPhone application. The campaign highlights how the Crisp Ad Platform can be used by agencies to create, deliver, and track interactive campaigns across the universe of mobile devices, both on the web and in applications. When the majority of mobile ad campaigns are platform-specific, Crisp is the only rich media vendor that enables creation and delivery of brilliant, rich-media ads in a true cross-platform manner.

Estee Lauder Lets You "Erase the Wrinkles" on Mobile

tamara — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:02:59 +0000

Setting out to promote its new Perfectionist [CP+] wrinkle filler, Estee Lauder worked with Crisp Wireless to create an interactive ad for the iPhone that allows users to play a game of erasing wrinkle lines directly within the ad. The campaign ran on Myxer, the leading mobile entertainment and personalization destination. Myxer's media-hungry audience matches well with the interactive nature of the ad, which was measured using engagement metrics, including expansions and interactions.

The campaign consisted of a top position banner than expanded to full screen. When rotated, consumers could tap-to-play the game. By rubbing their finger over the screen, viewers erased brow lines. A demonstration can be seen in the following video:

Estee Lauder Erase the Wrinkles Campaign from Crisp Wireless on Vimeo.

Best Practices in Mobile Video Advertising

xavier — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

The release of the iPad, the roll-out of 4G wireless networks with greater bandwidth, and the common availability of unlimited data plans are all driving the consumption and demand for mobile video. Overall, the number of mobile video users is predicted to increase to 95 million by 2015.

It is also becoming easier to produce and distribute mobile video. More mobile phones are in market that support video standards such as the H.264 codec, often represented via HTML5. This codec balances processor requirements, (battery life,) video quality and content size very well. HTTP Live Streaming technology now makes it easier to deliver dynamic pre/mid/post-roll advertising on Apple devices as well as video streaming via a basic web server infrastructure. The maturing technology increases available content, expands the audience for mobile video and makes it a more attractive mode of advertising. The advertiser can even reuse online video for mobile creative, driving down production costs.

However, mobile video has not become the norm just yet. Today nearly 50% of consumers are using mobile phones that do not support video. As smartphones continue to become the majority, this balance will shift.

As consumer’s demand for mobile video increases, Crisp Wireless advertisers have increased their interest in mobile video advertising. Advertisers are looking to use mobile video particularly with the iPad because of the uncompromising experience the device provides. Also, HTML5 allows for advertisers to embed the video window and provides APIs that give control and tracking capabilities surrounding activities around video play. This week, Apple announced the iPhone 4 with the new iOS 4. We expect this extremely high screen resolution (326 dpi) device to further improve advertiser demand for video.

Some best practices to consider if you are thinking mobile video advertising are as follows:

Appropriately encode your video for the type of internet connection you will be utilizing
Many mobile screens have a 1.5:1 aspect ratio, different from TV 4:3 or movie 16:9, so avoid pillarboxed and letterboxed viewing
Leverage all of capabilities of the device you will be advertising on
Avoid fast moving action, small text, and dark shots when creating a mobile video advertisement

In addition, some different formats to consider when designing a mobile video ad include:

Click-to-video: Link from banner direct to video
Ad with video: Video embedded in a full page ad, only as part of the creative
Bumper: Very short video before or after other content
Pre-roll: Typically about 15 seconds of video commercial before other video
Mid-roll: Same during content
Post-roll: Same after content

The outlook of mobile video advertising is filled with potential thanks to the iPad and similar devices allowing advertisers to embed videos and smartphones that support the tap-to-video format. As more and more smartphones support HTML5 video, costs will continue to deflate, eventually creating a CPM based model for mobile video ads. Premium content providers will continue selling sponsorship advertising for apps, encompassing mobile video ads.

Metrics Matter: Brand Advertisers Need to Go Beyond the Click

TomF — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:36:41 +0000

Mobile advertising is highly effective, but measuring that effectiveness has been far too difficult. The reasons are well documented: multiple devices, online reports don’t translate to mobile, what you can measure technically varies from online given different forms of interaction (e.g. no mouseover), lack of standard definitions, etc.

In Phase 1 of Mobile Advertising (pre-2010), this lack of post-click analytics was fine; ringtone and other direct response advertisers simply wanted to sell product and could care less about engaging the user. But brand advertisers demand more – they want to know detailed information about how their campaigns perform well after the click (or tap).

It was good to see Kathryn Koegel call out Steve Jobs in Ad Age for talking about CTR (click-thru rate) as the way to measure iAd effectiveness. As she points out, "just admit it's a DR (direct response) business based on gaming and not some kind of brand engagement play as his ad examples showed. We all know about the fallacy of clicks as a pure measure of ad impact."

Crisp tracks metrics that matter to brands, and does so across platforms and devices. It’s probably the most important thing we do – delivering a unified report to enable agencies to measure their campaign’s effectiveness and optimize on the fly. Once dominated by performance ads, more and more mobile sites and apps now feature ads from Fortune 500 marketers. These top brands realize the importance of reaching their target audience on the most personal of devices. And now that they can track interactions like display time and video plays or incorporate games and surveys into mobile ads, they are hooked.

Emotion and magic are great for press events, but that’s not why brands are flocking to mobile. It’s all about the metrics.

Swiper no Swiping! A Response to the ClickZ Review of Wired's iPad App Advertising

toml — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:27:54 +0000

ClickZ to my knowledge is the first site to dedicate a 10 minute video (see below) to reviewing mobile ads. The fact that they reviewed only the Wired iPad app advertising in itself is worth noting in terms of how important the iPad is to advertisers and publishers. Since the video is long I’ll boil it down for you, they were unhappy with the lack of interactivity, and since there were so many ads in the app, and because print ads are not by nature interactive, it was probably really difficult for Wired’s sales team to do much. We’ve been a part of the process of digitizing print ads for iPad apps over the past two months and we thought it would be great to do a deeper dive into what’s in the Wired App and offer some perspective, pointers and thoughts on how advertisers could do better.

Whoa There.

It’s not easy to change creative without creative direction and it’s not easy to make an ad digitally rich unless you’re given the right assets--but, it’s not impossible. Although the ClickZ review was all about the negatives, I would give HBO, eTrade, and Lea & Perrins points for their creative use of gallery buttons. Ads like Lea & Perrins full page ad with hotspots make a flat print ad into something highly interactive. Also, leveraging learnings from mobile content delivery, we’ve been proponents of galleries because it takes big sets of content and makes it bite sized. If you play with the Lea & Perrins ad you are getting 12 recipes – however they are laid out with 12 buttons, and this much more fun to tap through than a list, especially because the text changes quickly using CSS + JavaScript transitions.

Swiper no Swiping!

Content is King, and what we’ve learned at Crisp is that as we work with App developers who leverage the Swipe feature, is that we cannot count on using swipe as a gesture within advertising. If mobile devices are about vertical scrolling, the iPad is about horizontal swiping. As Swiper the Fox might say to Dora the Explorer "You'll never find it now! Ha, ha, ha!!"

Note: we’ve also learned that swiping content does not load as fast as tapping for content, because Apple’s gestural technology is not smart enough to start loading at the beginning of a swipe, so quick taps onto a navigation arrow will actually perform the request to either the local file or to a server faster in every case.

Follow the Arrows

Intel and HBO got dings for not offering readers a clue to find the rest of their ads. Without adding navigation buttons on the creative it would be nearly impossible for users to know that there were three panels for each of these ads. Why is that? Well because the Wired iPad app uses horizontal scrolling, they decided to offer vertical scrolling to show the rest of the ad content. Other than us reviewers of ads, will anyone else ever change their behavior to see ad content?

Danger Zone

Samsung only offered a full screen in portrait, which looks bad in landscape. You have a choice here, offering a cube-sized creative in the safe zone, anything smaller than 660x660, would have saved Samsung. In the absence of the right sized creative you need to offer something different in landscape than you do in portrait. Even if it doesn’t fit the screen perfectly, it’s better to make it look like you are doing it on purpose rather than just have the wrong sized ad swirl down the whitespace well when you turn your iPad to landscape.

The punchline also got lost in the rotation on the Heineken ad. Heineken gets points for having a call to action for rotation, and offering ‘can I touch’ in portrait and ‘yes you can’ in landscape. However, you cannot touch anything in the ad. Hmmf.

Link-in, not Link Out

Most advertisers with embedded links didn’t use webview, so they left the app to show a microsite rather than render the landing page in the app. Use the webview.

What do you get the advertiser that has nothing? ClickZ offered a wake up call to Tissot who did not even put their website link in the ad, but clearly leveraged ‘connectivity’ in the ad copy, so it looked like they were paying lip service to interactivity.

No Tracking, no Interactivity

Giving agencies the benefit of the doubt, they may have said, ‘Why do I want to offer cool features if I can’t track them?’ Does your iPad app have an SDK that can handle rich media interactions and offer dynamic reporting? We suggest using our HTML5 open web standards approach because it can leverage the same rich media as you serve on mobile web, iPad safari and even on your desktop site.

The takeaway for me is that mobile advertising is now getting the spotlight, and the size of the creative is now full page, which is bigger than any digital creative we’ve ever seen before. There’s a bigger opportunity and a bigger margin for error.

[Title inspired by Dora the Explorer's Fox nemesis named Swiper (credit for the reference, Nathan Carver)]

Sprint Advertises Mobile Plans With Mobile Ads

tamara — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:18:41 +0000

Sprint has brought back the low-priced unlimited plan and is using mobile advertising to roll it out. In order to reach their target market, Sprint teamed up with Crisp Wireless and Hearst Magazine Digital Media’s Women network to create a mobile campaign that would get people talking.

Sprint’s campaign ran on a variety of mobile sites from the Hearst network including, Marie Claire, Real Beauty, House Beautiful, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Harper's Bazaar. The campaign featured two different ad executions, including Crisp's exclusive Adhesion fixed placement. The banners promoted the $69.99 unlimited plan and allowed consumers to expand the ad unit. Consumers who chose to “learn more” were taken to a specialized landing page from Sprint’s mobile site to explore phones, mobile broadband, and their unique “Any Mobile, Anytime” offering.

Through this campaign, Sprint was able to measure the number and rate of expansions and interactions.

Buying, Creating, & Measuring Mobile Rich Media Advertising Campaigns -- OMMA Mobile

tamara — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:27:56 +0000

For those of you who couldn't attend OMMA Mobile today, you missed a great show. Crisp hosted a special breakfast workshop for brand advertisers entitled: Mobile Rich Media Advertising: Buying, Creating, & Measuring Campaigns. We've included the slides below. Questions? Want to learn more? Contact Crisp Sales at sales@crispwireless.com.

Buying, Creating, and Measuring Mobile Rich Media Advertising Campaigns

View more presentations from Crisp Wireless.

American Museum of Natural History Exhibits on AccuWeather.com

tamara — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:40:43 +0000

With new exhibits on display at the American Museum of Natural History, they teamed up with Wit Media and Crisp Wireless to create an array of engaging mobile ads. Targeting mobile users in NYC, the American Museum of Natural History leveraged Crisp's new Adhesion fixed ad placement technology and six different mobile ad executions to create a dynamic, integrated campaign.

The campaign included a blend of auto-expanded ads that closed after three seconds, expandable banners, and two tap-to-video banners, with a mix of creative executions, to promote the popular "Journey to the Stars" show and "Lizards & Snakes Alive!" exhibit. The expandable and click-to-video executions utilized Crisp's exclusive Adhesion ad placement, which remains at the bottom of the screen as the user scrolls through the site. These ads were displayed on AccuWeather.com's mobile site.

The campaign is running April through June 2010 and is measuring consumer engagement with the various ad formats including banner and expansion panel interaction rates and video plays.

Stop Arguing about Flash vs HTML 5 and Let's Move Mobile Advertising Forward

xavier — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:17:04 +0000

Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and many other leading Internet enablers are now all involved in an active debate on how to move forward with content authoring in the multi-platform world. The launch of the tablet device has prompted an escalating discussion on the merits of technologies like Adobe Flash versus Object C and HTML5. It has taken ridiculous proportions. While it didn’t bother anyone initially that smart phones often don’t support Flash, with the launch of the Apple iPad, many were starting to question why. I wrote a blog post on the lack of Flash on the iPhone about a year ago but Steve Job’s comments recently have really exposed the issue in a different light.

Apple has turned from reluctantly allowing content authored with 3^rd party technologies like Flash on their mobile devices, to Steve Jobs doing a hatchet job on Flash. He provided justification for that in an open letter which revealed his passionate dislike for technologies which aren’t native to his own platform. I'm not buying every technical concern he has about Flash, but I'm not suspecting him of being disengenuous neither. I do believe however, for Apple to not give the consumer and the developer the choice to use Flash is clearly a business model issue. Some companies like to allow publishers, advertisers and developers to author content once and distribute them on many platforms. Other companies - like Apple - require native development on their platform, so that content is only available on their own market leading platform.

For apps from the App Store, Apple forces developers to use Apple's Objective-C based Cocoa API, a native and proprietary platform. Until recently, developers could also program in Flash and re-package it in Objective-C before submitting it to the App Store. This is now not allowed anymore, but the alternative Objective-C is still practical enough.

However, for content on the mobile web, Jobs makes the impractical suggestion of using the W3C defined open HTML5 standard as an alternative for Adobe's proprietary Flash. That would make a lot of sense, except no one has any tools for developing similar content with the nascent HTML5. Adobe Flash is many years ahead and, after carefully reading the technical specifications of both Flash and HTML5, I’m wondering if HTML5 will ever be able to match the level of expression that the author can achieve with Flash. This is a challenge that authors of web based rich media like video, games and advertising have to deal with now.

HTML5 is a specification for video (H.264), vector animation (canvas), interactive logic (JavaScript) and layout (CSS/HTML). Adobe Flash also covers video (FLV), vector animation (FLA), interactive logic (ActionScript) and layout. Aside from the video part which can automatically be converted (be it with some loss of functionality), the other parts of these technologies are absolutely not automatically convertible and aren't even comparable due to vast differences in sophistication. Flash is far better with animation, while HTML5 is far more efficient in simple content layout. It has been surprising how many opinions are published where that critical fact is omitted. (Including Steve Jobs open letter)

What About Mobile Advertising?

Crisp Wireless has made the bet that Flash would be too slow to come to mobile in order to be a practical technology for mobile rich media advertising. We have invested in developing a compelling framework for designers of ad units that leverage HTML5, without requiring the designer to program. Using HTML 5, we are enabling advertisers to use a single technology to deliver compelling ads across the broadest range of platforms. Using Crisp's ad building blocks, the designer can simply and easily create mobile rich media ads. Individuals interested in experimenting with the beta version of this technology are welcome to contact us –end mandatory plug.

As for mobile devices from Apple. The debate is now over. Even Adobe has cancelled their Flash initiatives on iPhone. However, Adobe will keep improving their mobile Flash technology and will find plenty of platforms, including Android, that won’t reject their technology in the near future. Apple will require developers to give their mobile devices special attention at the expense of standards that publishers and ad agencies are familiar with today. Here at Crisp Wireless we are investing in products that can bring that cost down and make the process to run more compelling display advertising easier on all leading mobile platforms. Our HTML5 strategy is part of that, but we're working to support Flash on Android as well.

New Apple Products, Brand Advertising, and Crisp Wireless

boris — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:54:57 +0000

A lot has been said about iPad and iAd already. I don't know if I can add a unique or interesting perspective. However, I do know that I can authoritatively comment on how Crisp is supporting iPad and how our rich media advertising solutions benefit from iAd.

With the launch of iPad and iAd, Apple has provided another validation point that the dominance of direct response advertising in mobile is coming to an end and the era of brand advertising is upon us. Brand advertising works when playing to emotions and Apple devices are enabling advertising with emotion. iPad, iPhone, Android, and other HTML5-based devices can deliver engaging, interactive, and plainly gorgeous ads that integrate high-quality images, hi-fi audio, HD video, and location to boot. Brand advertising on mobile has indeed arrived.

The shift to brand advertising is an area that Crisp Wireless has been focused on for the last two years. We created the Crisp rich media ad platform, launched our Adhesion fixed placement for the mobile web, and built an advertising sales force to support the direct sales efforts of our publishers. We have executed rich media campaigns with Skittles, Intel, Paramount Pictures, Estee Lauder, Lexus, Infiniti and many others. Without exception, all are major brand advertisers.

With respect to iPad, I want to state in no uncertain terms that the Crisp Rich Media Ad Framework supports iPad. Our platform enables agency developers to develop HTML5 ads that can run on iPad today. These ads push the envelope of mobile advertising, take full advantage of the iPad's larger canvass, and are limited only by the author's imagination. These ads run in application and on standard web sites, providing a compelling alternative to Flash ads, which are not supported on iPad. To date, we have extended our Adhesion placement technology to iPad and can convert existing IAB Flash ads into HTML5 ads that can run on iPad. We will also continue to deliver new and innovative iPad-optimized ad templates.

iAd won't be available for a few months so I have to resort to speculating. Apple has addressed the needs of its key constituency, the thousands of app developers. This is a long-tail play. Apple has neither addressed the needs of premium publishers, nor has it prevented third parties from providing advertising solutions for premium publishers. To add, iAd is all about apps, not mobile web, which will support open standards even on iPhone and iPad.

The Crisp Rich Media Ad Framework will continue to stay ahead of the market for rich media advertising on mobile web. Interestingly, what Steve Jobs demonstrated last week in his demo--a Toy Story 3 ad with options to watch clips and play games--Crisp has already delivered on the mobile web.

Much has been said about the closed nature of iAd for apps. However, there is nothing to indicate that the adlib libraries in Object C and JavaScript are exclusively tied into the Quattro Ad Network. While the Quattro iAd ad network might have some unique capabilities related to targeting, we haven't found a reason to believe that Apple will make it technically impossible for developers or premium publishers to leverage some of the new advertising related libraries in iPhone 4.0 OS.

In other words, I expect the Crisp Rich Media Ad Framework will be used by agencies to build rich media ads that work on mobile web, which what is possible today, and in iPhone/iPad apps after iAd becomes available.

In short, iPad and iAd will be a boon for mobile rich media brand advertising. Brand advertisers will finally start spending meaningful budgets on mobile. And Crisp is ready to help both publishers and agencies to execute on engaging rich media campaigns across mobile web and in app.

First Impressions of Apple iAd

boris — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:59:33 +0000

Apple's announcement today of iAd really highlights the importance of relevant, innovative mobile advertising. The era of ringtone and download ads is ending with high profile brand marketers taking their place.

Crisp Wireless has been at the forefront of this shift to brand advertising for the last two years and we've seen significant traction with the likes of major brands such as Skittles, Intel, Paramount Pictures, Estee Lauder, Lexus, Infiniti, and more. We believe in the rich media, engaging experience that provides opportunities for interaction within the ad unit itself, including the likes of location awareness, video, game play, social networking, sharing, and more.

We are going to continue to bring these interactive mobile Web and app ad experiences to premium publishers who would rather maintain control over their inventory and sales. Moreover, agencies will be able to use Crisp to deliver rich media ads to wherever smartphone users access content, whether through their browser or in applications. We deliver a unified experience and reporting across the mobile web and apps, devices, and platforms including iPhone, iPad, Android, and more.

It is wonderful to have the power of Apple pushing innovation and interactivity to drive forward the possibilities of mobile advertising.

The iPad is here.

xavier — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:00:37 +0000

I pre-ordered the iPad via the Apple website. Even though the Apple site mentioned the Saturday April 3 delivery date, I was really expecting it on Monday. On Friday, I tracked the package via the UPS site in the style of NORAD tracking Santa. This was yet another reality check of where these beautiful electronics are manufactured. The package was still in Guangzhou, China. Our UPS guy generally doesn't even attempt deliveries in the weekend to our business address, so I called UPS. Before I could get through to an agent, an automated message preempted me. It announced to all impatient kids waiting for their iPad (or something like that) that it was going to get delivered on Saturday. Indeed, it even arrived in the morning.

Once in possession of the device, the crazy idea of taking a golf club to it before even turning it on like Daniel Tosh did in this clip flashed through my head. But that would have been a really stupid thing to do. Minutes after using the device, it became obvious--this device stands up really well to all it was hyped to be.

Even though many people have said that this is all about the irrational culture created by Apple's marketing genius, I have a perfectly rational explanation for the popularity this device is having. Here it goes.

Evident by the basically unchanged Windows PCs many of us have been using for at least a decade now, the consumer is pretty tolerant to the often poor user interfaces of personal computers. After all, what choice did we have? This has not been the case for cell phones. There has been a lot of choice of different mobile software platforms. Since the first Motorola 3000 cell phone circa 1983, all the way up to today, if a mobile phone is hard to use, it will sell poorly and it will give the mobile operator a huge customer support headache. Since I started using a Blackberry 957, I have wished the same care for detail would be put into the user interface of an actual computer OS.

This is it. The iPad is a small computer with the well designed user interface of a cellphone--the iPhone. I can find a large collection of content and software especially designed and optimized for this exact hardware. This is not the case on everyone's PC. In contrast to some PCs, it is a computing experience without the common frustrations of slow software, clogged menus or searing hot laptops with 4 hour battery lives. Not surprisingly, it is individuals who have great computer skills who don't understand the hype about iPad. They miss the point. They are often happy Linux users unaware of user interface obstacles common to software.

Users of the iPhone had seen what developers are capable of in terms of interactivity design on a constrained mobile device. Those are the same users who bought approximately 700,000 iPads over the weekend. It's a great example of less is more. I read a great blog post by Matt Gemmell on iPad user interface design here. The more direct a consumer can interact with content the more fun they have. So far, because of the large touch screen on a mobile 'always-on' device, the iPad allows more direct interaction with content than any other. The device is surprisingly fast thanks to the A4 CPU that can move data 64bits at a time.

Seeing the great full screen advertisements for Coca-cola, Oracle, Buick, and several other advertisers in between the content of great iPad optimized applications (like the WSJ and USA Today applications), I expect this device to be a darling of brand advertisers. The combination of large full page interstitials with integrated video works really well. Advertisers finally have the tripple threat: size, interactivity and measurability.

This is great news for those who bought the iPad. Your favorite newspapers, magazines and TV shows are likely to be largely free to download. For mobile publishers, this is a chance to take more control over monetizing their content as well. The ad network model that has been helpfull in mobile because of its efficiency, I expect to be less important for iPad apps. Regardless what you call rich media on mobile (H.264, HTML5, JavaScript or Flash), the iPad can support more impressive advertisements than any popular mobile device.

The Mobile Upfront Conference: An Overview

tamara — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:35:22 +0000

A crowd of nearly 500 representatives from agencies, publishers, and technology vendors gathered on Tuesday, March 16th down in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for the first annual Mobile Upfront Conference, hosted by Jumptap. The day and the venue were both jam-packed, with discussions from the people out there on the front lines executing mobile advertising campaigns. If you want a full overview of the conference, you might want to read through the tweetstream, but I'll summarize some key takeaways here.

Mobile BRAND advertising is still in a testing and trial mode but all major brands are incorporating some form of mobile advertising
Isobar recommends that all their advertisers start with approximately a $50K ad spend in mobile to experiment, test and measure. They also recommend that everyone commission a brand study to help judge effectiveness.

Mobile advertising spend from brands will continue to grow
Tara Moss from Isobar stated that mobile is approximately 5-10% of the mobile ad spend now, but expects it to represent 40% of the online spend in a few years, and R/GA feels that while mobile ad budgets have been slow to develop, they will be quicker to grow than what we saw in the early days of online.

Mobile advertising is effective
While measurement is a concern for all the panelists throughout the day, what they have measured so far has been an unprecedented success with three to four times the results of online. Measurements vary depending on campaign goals (acquisition, retention, brand awareness, commerce, foot traffic, etc) so measuring both engagement and conversion across all campaigns is critical. John Hadl from Brand in Hand described how he has an assistant dedicated to compiling reports from various ad server and ad networks -- clearly that problem needs to be solved for mobile advertising to scale (and Crisp Wireless has some solutions for this.) Marriott has actually had amazing success with revenue driven from their mobile site exceeding that from individual country sites.

Mobile expertise needs to be integrated throughout the agency
Instead of chasing shiny new objects, mobile needs to be leveraged according to the campaign goals and objectives. Everyone needs to understand mobile to be able to properly advise clients, develop compelling creative, and execute media buys. Isobar has taken bold steps in this direction and now has 150 mobile specialists spread throughout their 3000-person organization.

Mobile web is the future
We heard this from Brand in Hand but most eloquently from Sony Music who believes in the mobile web because it reaches across all platforms and countries and "hits more people." Panelists believe that HTML5 will change the course of mobile and lessen the focus on apps.

Mobile ad networks still dominate
Media buyers want scale and to achieve this in mobile they've worked with ad networks. Brand in Hand spends 65% of its budget through mobile ad networks and prefers to work with just a few organizations and publishers to manage resources. Premium publishers expressed a clear desire to sell direct and offer greater value to brand advertisers with sponsorships, cross-platform buys, and association of brand with premium content.

Creatives need to understand mobile
It is great to creative-types to play and experiment with each new thing, but ultimately someone needs to set the marketing communications objectives and figure out how mobile incorporates into that. For some audiences, it is central. For others, it is a sideline. But because mobile is quickly becoming the "first screen" it needs to be a piece of all.

Matisyahu performing at Mobile Upfront

Build Better Mobile Ads

xavier — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:52:33 +0000

Steve Jobs says "Mobile Ads Suck". (Pardon the expression. His words ... not mine.) He apparently said this to a source of a BusinessWeek article earlier this year. I need to agree with him. Many ad campaigns are indeed poorly executed, with slim banners and little ad content.

So, what needs to happen to make mobile display advertising better? We have a couple of ideas that I will briefly exlain in this blog post. But first, let's be clear about something. Some mobile display ad campaigns are amazing. Crisp is currently serving a gem of an ad unit for advertising new Intel processors.

The ad unit is a collaboration between various ad technology companies who are each doing what they do best. Crisp Wireless is involved as the rich media platform that ensures compatibility with various device versions, serves the ad, tracks every event on the unit and reports on user engagement through a rich reporting interface. This interactive ad expands from a non-intrusive banner ad and employs drag and drop input for the consumer to engage with the message. The ad lets the user answer a series of questions to discover the processor that is right for them according to the chosen answers. Take a look at the video to see what you think or check it out live on CNN Mobile or CBS Mobile.

So how can you build better mobile ads?

1. Use HTML/CSS/JavaScript: Basic banners are out. We believe, to make for compelling advertising, these richer technologies need to be leveraged. There is no need to wait for Flash.

2. Make the advertising SDKs in applications compatible with these web technologies. This Intel ad, runs both on mobile web and within iPhone applications.

3. Track the events created by the consumers interactions. Because the ad is built in JavaScript every event can be captured.

4. Invoke the ad client-side. In other words, use a JavaScript invocation system for that ad. This allows the browser to load the page first and the ad later. This seemingly small change allows ads to be much larger in terms byte size without impacting the user experience negatively.

5. Keep the consumer on the mobile web site of the publisher or in the application. With these richer ads, all the ad content can be conveyed without taking the user out of the experience.

Crisp to Present at Upcoming Mobile Advertising Events

tamara — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:15:36 +0000

Crisp Wireless will be on the move throughout the month of March to participate in several mobile advertising-related events.

digiday: Mobile
The first will be digiday: mobile on March 8th at the Hilton in Los Angeles. At this event, Boris Fridman, CEO, will provide the 12pm spotlight presentation: Brand Advertising on Mobile – Moving Beyond the Long Tail, which will provide examples of how brands are moving beyond experimentation and using mobile rich media to engage with consumers. Following this brief presentation, he will also participate in the “How to Innovate with New Mobile Ad Units” panel discussion. For complete agenda please check out digiday:mobile agenda. Registration for this event is free and can be completed at digiday registration using the code “DDMLASP.”

Mobile Upfront Conference
The first-ever Mobile Upfront Conference, hosted in part by Jumptap, is being held on March 16th in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for advertising and media executives to gain insight on “All Things Mobile.” Crisp executives will be on hand and participating in rich media panel discussions. To learn more visit http://mobileupfront.com/ or register today.

OMMA Global
Wrapping up our events this month, Crisp will be out in San Francisco to attend OMMA Global “Unbound” on March 17-18th. You will find Tom Limongello, Sr. Director of Business Development, participating in the panel discussion “Publishers Show Us the Mobile Money” on Wednesday, March 17th at 2pm. Tom and Andy Sullivan, SVP of Client Services, will also moderate a special workshop panel discussion: App Fatigue: Why the Mobile Web is the Future of Mobile (& Tablet) Advertising on Thursday, March 18th at 12:15pm. This presentation will discuss the importance of the mobile browser when it comes to the future of how consumers use the web along with how companies will utilize the web as a communication channel. You can also find Crisp at Booth 123 – right near the bar! This event’s full agenda can be found at OMMA Agenda. To register for free, please visit OMMA Registration.

The SXSW Interactive Mobile Thriving Guide (iPhone)

toml — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:23:43 +0000

The snow today is making me really look forward to SXSW Interactive in Austin. 2010 will be my 3rd time attending so I wanted to write up all of the mobile services that I will be leaning on to schedule, network and keep my battery going all week…and I do mean *all* week.

Rules

SXSW is a game. It’s about doing everything you want but not wasting your time planning and confirming, getting everything done, meeting up with everyone you wanted to see. Potentially you won’t remember any of it, but you’ll have lots of new connections and warm feelings for people who are showing up in your stream all year as a result.

Austin is your playground. It’s where all the new mobile services that help us accomplish our SXSW plans.

There are 3 areas which you must master if you are to fully free yourself of your laptop @ SXSWi:

Advance Scheduling: It is imperative to look at the schedules and try to comprehend everything that is going on so you don’t feel the dread of missing out on anything. This plan will fail miserably, but these tools will make the experience better for you and better for those who follow your example.

1) Tungle Tungle lets you schedule with people without a lot of back and forth. It looks at your outlook or ical powered calendar and lets you paint your availability, or even shake to schedule from it’s iPhone app. This is for real meetings with people that you cannot miss.

Here is the tungle demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VOQ9O4Rycc

SXSW calendar [No], Social Features [Some], Requires Download [Yes], Mobile Website/App [Yes] Mobile Speed [Fast]

2) Plancast http://plancast.com/toms I’ve been told I use this too much already, but I’ve been very excited about it’s potential for spreading the word about your particular panel or workshop at SXSW. They have useful profiles on there already like Badgeless SXSW which tells you all the events you can attend without a SXSW Badge. BTW @Leahculver please skip the Owen van Natta party and finish up the iPhone app b4 SXSWi, kthxbai.

SXSW calendar [No], Social Features [Yes], Requires Download [No] Mobile Website/App [No?] Mobile Speed [Slow]

3) My.SXSW iPhone Application This official app loads all of the event schedules at once (which takes a good amt of time the 1st time) and is integrated with the my.sxsw.com schedules and your official SXSW profile, which on the iPhone app is easier to set up than on the desktop. You can upload your photo and add social networks. However, this app is not connected for sharing panel links on social networks or even via email.

SXSW calendar [Yes], Social Features [No], Requires Download [No] Mobile Website/App [No?] Mobile Speed [Fast]

4) Sched.org http://sxsw2010.sched.org This was the best mobile web calendar last year with full description of panels and great use of JavaScript overlays to minimize page loads, still a bit heavy for AT&T

SXSW calendar [Yes], Social Features [No], Requires Download [No], Mobile Website/App [Yes] Mobile Speed [Medium]

5) Sitby.us http://sitby.us This may replace Sched.org for me this year. A quick loading mobile website with really easy navigation for the full SXSWi calendar and ability to check-in and share on twitter WHERE YOU ARE SITTING in a particular panel! How’s that for real-time? Really well done.

SXSW calendar [Yes], Social Features [Yes], Mobile Website/App [Yes], Requires Download [No]

Contingency Planning: Planning The panels, movies, drinkups and music in Austin start out like spores and grow based on community distribution of event details and checkins from attendees. The battlefield of SXSW will look nothing like your pretty calendar. So SXSW has already tested Twitter and Foursquare in this capacity, but there is a new entrant to the fray and it is specifically designed to facilitate conversation at an event without junking up the feeds of people who are not attending, and it’s called HotPotato. All panels at SXSWi 2010 should start by pointing their audiences to the associated HotPotato event.

1) Twitter and Twitter Connect Sites/Apps Status updates and hashtags still rule the day, it will be interesting to see if that changes in 2010. Tweetie 2 is my choice of app, and its seamless ability to manage more than one account is quite helpful when on the go. Sitby.us like many other apps lets you Tweet

Reach [High], Immediacy [High], Local relevance [Low], Event features [Hashtags], Noise [High]

2) Facebook and Facebook Connect Sites/Apps Facebook events are underlying a lot of the Plancast links and is currently the glue behind HotPotato

Reach [Medium], Immediacy [Low], Local relevance [Low], Event features [Full Service], Noise [High]

3) Foursquare Foursquare has picked up where Twitter left off, as now people find out which party to go to based on the stream of Foursquare check-ins. Badges specifically designed for SXSW were a hit last year, e.g. the Porky badge for checking in at Stubbs. Too crazy for you?... Check-in off the grid like tiger w. be

Reach [Low], Immediacy [High], Local relevance [High], Event features [People Tab], Noise [Medium]

4) HotPotato HotPotato lets you attend, watch or follow events based on your proximity and makes the chatter in each event relevant by 1) defining the event 2) offering more than just commenting e.g. posting photos and links for making references and analogies to the event 3) giving you a view to whom within your network (currently powered by Facebook Connect) is commenting on what events 4) tuning your feed based on location

Reach [Medium], Immediacy [High], Local relevance [High], Event features [Full Service], Noise [Low]

Battery Life!

What I will bring to stay connected 24/7 from Thurs-Wed.

1) Just Mobile | Gum Pro: this little power grenade from Just Mobile is supposed to carry 2-5x iPhone charges and power up fast, 90% in an hour, and it uses both a 5-pin camera cord power up and and the iPhone cord to charge the iPhone, with a switch to turn off the juice if it is not being used.

How people will make fun of you: “Why do you have an iPhone cord coming out of your pocket? Are you plugged in right now?”

2) Griffin Tune Juice: the un-green little AAA battery pack that takes 4 batteries and charges without requiring a wall socket. Which means you don’t have to stand under the stage at Stubbs or hit on hostesses to have them charge your phone if you forgot to charge your extra battery pack.

How people will make fun of you: “batteries? srsly?”

3) Kensington Mini: This bottom feeder is good for a small charge at the end of the day, light, small, no extra cords while carrying. Charges with a 5-pin camera cord into USB. The fact that it plugs into the bottom could be a problem if you put it in your front pocket and sit down. L

How people will make fun of you: “gee you have a really long phone.”

4) The Mophie Pack: Mophie gets a colbertian wag of the finger. Once my battery pack of choice, until the weird jack that plugs in a weird non 5-pin cord broken into the device and has rendered the Mophie pack useless.

How people will make fun of you: “is that really an iPhone, it looks so big and bulky.”

It will be a showdown for sure, but at least I’ll be prepared.

What I’ll be doing:

http://plancast.com/a/if1 Moderating UX of Mobile Panel, Friday March 12th @ 11am with Kyle Outlaw (Razorfish), Scott Jenson (Google) and Barbara Ballard (Little Springs Design)

http://plancast.com/a/if3 Organizing the Mobile Advertising Workshop, Tuesday March 16th @ 3:30pm with Dennis Crowley (Foursquare) and Justin Siegel (MocoSpace)

http://plancast.com/a/11r0 Organizing HTML5 vs. Flash Discussion, Monday March 15th @ 11:00am with Richard Ting (R/GA)

http://plancast.com/a/if4 Organizing the Mobile Social Workshop, Tuesday March 16th @ 2:00pm with Michael Sharon (Facebook) and Justin Shaffer (HotPotato)

http://plancast.com/a/if5 Organizing the Mobile Commerce Workshop, Tuesday March 16th @ 5:00pm with Francesco Rovetta (PayPal)

Is anyone writing up a guide for Android?

Ping me @ SXSWi on your service of choice.

foursquare

tungle

plancast

twitter

What Does Apple Blocking In-App Location Ads Mean for Mobile Advertising?

TomF — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:08:42 +0000

Apple made it official, announcing they will reject any app that "uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location."

While not surprising, it should not discourage marketers looking to use location-based ads. Crisp delivers 100% opt-in location advertising for mobile web and apps (yes, including iPhone apps!)

Looking to target iPhone users to drive them to your nearest retail location? With Crisp's location-aware ad units, it's a snap. Want to allow Blackberry users to input their zip code into an ad unit to get directed to the nearest theater? No problem. Crisp delivers location-based ads across a wide array of publisher sites and apps.

How does it work? In each instance, the user provides their consent to allow the ad unit to utilize their location.

Example Campaign:

If you are an advertiser looking to leverage location targeting, contact us at sales@crispwireless.com.

Google's New Click-to-Call Ads Not so New to Crisp

chris — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:00:51 +0000

Google recently announced a new feature for its AdWords customers: click-to-call phone numbers in mobile ads.

This feature lets end users engage directly with a business by phone, e.g. make a restaurant reservation. It can automatically select the number of the nearest location if there are multiple listings. Crisp has actually supported this click-to-call feature set for some time now, as well as universal device support, which ensures that the proper click-to-call protocol is used based on device detection.

While Google’s basic functionailty set is great for AdWords advertisers, it may not be sufficient for premium advertisers and brands. Imagine if a national computer distributor launched a new line of products and launched an ad campaign which connected interested consumers directly with its call sales representatives. How would the advertiser know if the campaign was successful or not?

For this reason, Crisp developed advanced call duration analytics in its rich media ad platform. Premium advertisers can measure exactly how long end users spent on the phone call. They can filter out irrelevant data such as dropped calls and calls with minimal call times. Brand advertisers who are familiar with rich media video completion metrics online will instantly be familiar with this new class of engagement measurement. Publishers can also expect higher CPMs from ads that drive higher call times and ultimately more conversions. Contact a Crisp Sales Reprensentative for more information.

What the iPad Means for Advertisers

TomF — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:57:40 +0000

While it remains to be seen if the iPad is a device game-changer, we do know that it requires a new approach to advertising. iPad users will enjoy the full Internet browsing experience with the bandwidth, screen size, and input mechanisms to interact with the same websites as they do from their desktop PCs. With one big exception – the iPad will not support Flash, at least not initially.

What does the lack of Flash support mean for advertising on the iPad? Missed opportunity. Online ad networks such as Tribal Fusion, Glam, and 24/7 Real Media, as well as publishers that sell direct, are not equipped to deal with non-Flash rich media ads. So how will brand advertisers reach this potentially fertile audience?

We’ve already solved this problem for other mobile devices and are rapidly extending these rich media formats to large format devices such as the iPad. The Crisp Rich Media Ad Platform supports rich media JavaScript ads that can be rendered on both the iPhone and iPad. Our platform integrates with online ad servers, such as DART and ATLAS, making it possible to integrate your mobile and desktop ad serving. We also deliver the critical engagement reporting you expect from rich media advertising.

If you are an agency, ad network or publisher interested in advertising on the iPad, contact Crisp, we can support your rich media advertising needs on the iPad from day one.

Crisp's Rich Media Ad Support for the Apple iPad

xavier — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:12:33 +0000

I admit it. I decided to buy that darn Apple tablet before I even knew what it was priced at. I’m as susceptible to Apple’s marketing tactics as the next guy. But am I the ideal audience for this class of personal hardware? As a software developer? As a business person? Not really.

From what I can tell right now, the Apple iPad is the perfect device for those who have lighter computing needs, or will serve as a companion device that covers the majority of your needs outside of the office -- books, magazines, movies, music, email, web surfing, and games. It is a great lifestyle device and Steve Jobs’ pricing strategy makes it clear he wants this to be a device for everyone. The possible competing hardware has a narrower audience. Netbooks for instance, I see more as an economical and light laptop alternative for students and business travelers who need to run PC software. The Kindle and other eReaders are uni-taskers. No, the iPad is in its own class right now. Finally, we have a device for the glossy, full page, magazine style ad experience. We don’t expect advertisers will want to run simple banners here.

Crisp Wireless has been anticipating new classes of devices -- and their new audiences -- as part of our product planning initiatives for Rich Media Ad Unit technology. Our innovative ad unit design concepts and ad rendering scripts work great on Android, iPhone and many other devices. And we’ve done this work to date to fit within the CPU constraints and screen limitations of these smaller super-smart phone devices.

Enter the Apple iPad: Mobile Safari + 1 GHz Apple 'A4' CPU + gorgeous 9.7-inch IPS LCD display. It is a great device for rich media advertising. Both in apps and on the web, the device has what it needs to be fully compatible with our products. Apple decided to leverage largely the same resource efficient operating system for the iPad as what runs on the iPhone. I believe this was necessary to get to the 10 hour battery life. And because our products are well tested on the iPod Touch and iPhone, we can already make accurate predictions about the iPad compatibility.

The following is a summary of the new products and capabilities Crisp Wireless will be offering on the iPad:

Adhesion with expandable and animated rich media advertising for iPad
A broad variety of rich media ad unit templates and components for iPad
Bandwidth sensitive ad units for WiFi and 3G models of the iPad
Great ad engagement metrics and reporting for iPad

Yes, that’s pretty much the same offering as for Android and iPhone, but that’s what we are all about. Our dynamic and cross platform approach to creating mobile software works across multiple devices. We leverage Javascript and HTML5 to its fullest to detect, render and optimize a platform independent end-user experience. And once the iPad ships (with the promising CPU specs of this device), we will be able to push the limit further than ever.

Adobe Flash is still absent from this device and that's too bad. I don't think the argument about the device not having the CPU power to pull it off is going to stick any longer. Without waiting for Apple, we are working to solve this. Stay tuned!

If you have questions about the advertising possibilities on this or any other device, feel free to contact us.