Rakesh Thakrar Global Business Development Director Imagine Mobile
Remember how the oracles of advertising heralded the year of mobile year after year? Well, now, that mobile has fully entrenched itself on the marketing conscience, the focus has now shifted to tablet.
So does all the hype mean that agencies and their clients are now tablet ready? Unfortunately, not in all cases.
Those of you who use a tablet regularly may have noticed that whilst some ads are all-engaging and interactive, the majority, particularly full page units, are somewhat flat and static. It seems that advertisers aren’t evolving quickly enough to make the most of the many new tablet opportunities that have presented themselves over the last 18 months.
The advent of the tablet, particularly the iPad, has provided those of us who live and breathe mobile marketing with wonderful new toys to show off what we can do. At Imagine, we have been lucky enough to do this for many global brands, making use of larger screen sizes and functionalities such as ‘swipe’ and ‘shake’ to build and run truly engaging creative units in premium publisher environments (many of which have been global firsts). Furthermore, delivering our campaigns through Inspired™, we have been able to pull reams of bespoke engagement metrics that now allow marketers to see exactly how their target audiences are interacting with their creative.
So why are many agencies and brands still grappling with the basics of tablet?
The challenge for many advertisers is the evolution of the audience experience on desktop versus tablet, which I’m sure in itself is keeping them extremely busy. Secondly, creative implementation across the diverse mobile eco-system (platform and ad-serving) is something that many are still coming to terms with. Simply put, delivering creative solutions in such dynamic environments has left many agencies without the in-house expertise to deliver.
Premium Publishers have also had their own internal challenges, including the impact of static full page ads in a tablet environment where audiences now increasingly expect something to happen. Campaign after campaign, our clients are always looking to try something new, which means that we find ourselves constantly working with publishers to evolve their tablet rich media offerings.
Not enough are embracing this innovative mentality though, so a huge opportunity remains for brands to dominate the highly productive tablet ad space. According to ‘Think with Google’, over 60% of iPad usage occurs in the evening when users are in a relaxed state of mind, the ‘lean back’ mode where they have time to engage and interact with brand content. This presents brands with a unique opportunity which should not be underestimated.
We are lucky enough to work with several agencies, and their clients, that never shy away from pushing the creative boundaries. This forward way of thinking is infectious and drives creativity in all our premium mobile campaigns. Innovation is the very basis of our mobile marketing world, and it is essential that brands embrace it and demand the very best that tablet has to offer from their agencies.
Written by Rakesh Thakrar Global Business Development Director Imagine Mobile
MMA UK Blog 
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