Online Mobile Banner Ads

Mobile banner ads have come, and gone, come again, left again, and now come again. At some point they will stay in the mobile space, but only if done well.

The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) has industry standard best practices for banner ads. Be sure to follow those requirements carefully, and expect the practices to evolve over time. Use the "less is more" philosophy to avoid banner blindness in which the user's eye simply does not register banner-appearing content.

In addition to following the MMA guidelines, a banner ad system should, where possible,

Make the ad content highly contextual, based both on content and other information discernible about the user.

Ensure that the advertising site is as well designed as the native application.

Set default focus below the banner ad, so the user does not have to scroll past it.

Provide a return pointer on the advertising site, so the user can easily return to your application. Note that frames are not readily available in the mobile environment.

Wireless Web – The common term for Internet use on a wireless phone. The wireless Web offers users the ability to do such things as play games and trivia, search for information, look up telephone numbers and addresses and do their banking and shopping, all on their wireless phone.

Fast food giant McDonald’s is promoting its new Dollar Menu at breakfast via a rich-media mobile advertising campaign. Mobile banner ads are running within The Weather Channel iPhone application, “The Dollar Menu is now at breakfast.” Here is an example of McDonald’s new banner ad campaign, which is one of the embedded ads in The Weather Channel iPhone application.

Clicking on the banner ad sends users to a mobile landing page where they can get more information about each item on the breakfast menu, as well as enter their ZIP code to find the McDonald’s closest to them. Having a mobile landing page dedicated to The Weather Channel application ads allows McDonald’s to track conversations initiated specifically through the banner ad.

While this campaign is both catchy and user friendly, the campaign itself does not take advantage of some of the more unique aspects of mobile marketing. Most notably, the landing page requires the user to enter a zip code when location information should already be available. There are several ways that location information could be collected from the initial page load, from metadata in the request to parameters pulled from the iPhone application itself and placed in the request URL. The data appears to be there, it just isn’t being used. The rich-media expandable ad units offer a breakthrough creative execution. OrderArtwork.com can provide advertisers the chance to push the envelope creatively on smartphones, with functionality and content built into the apps that benefit users and advertisers alike – opening the doors for expandable ads, click-to-video, GPS and more – while keeping the best user experience in mind.