AI, VR and AR. The trilogy at MWC

Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder of LoopMe Media

Another Mobile World Congress has come and gone, with over 2000 exhibitors and over 108,000 attendees. This year I found that attention had moved away from the topic of connected devices and to the trilogy of AI, VR and AR.

While virtual reality headsets completely take over your vision to give you the impression that you’re somewhere else, augmented reality adds to your current vision, projecting info on top of what the consumer is already seeing.

A look back at Cannes Lions

Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder of LoopMe

MediaCannes Lions is unique in the advertising calendar. No other trade event comes close for the creativity, number or sheer quality of those in attendance.

While the creativity and artistic merit of the advertising industry is acclaimed and discussed in the Palais, the outskirts of the festival are where it becomes interesting for the technology providers. This year questions around measurement, verification and optimisation came to the fore, as brands and agencies attempt to determine the value of their advertising.

Go Native: The rise of mobile video

Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder of LoopMe

Native advertising is one of those buzz words that just isn’t going away. It first featured on Google Trends in January 2012 and has been picking up steam ever since. Most digital conferences will discuss native in one form or another, but something which hasn’t quite registered on the industry’s radar is native video.

Beyond pre-roll

Written by Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder of LoopMe

Mention mobile video advertising and most of us will think pre-roll. It’s true that the format has a natural place at the top of the digital marketing funnel, helping brands raise awareness and drive website traffic.

But I think we have become fixated on pre-roll. As the IAB has pointed out, pre-roll is just one part of digital video ad effectiveness. And let’s face it, pre-roll can become irritating when you just want to watch something.

There are so many more exciting formats coming down the pike. I think mobile video is going to find its way further down the funnel, grabbing people’s attention and persuading them, through the art and science of advertising, to convert.

Principal among these I see as native video ads. Unlike pre-roll, native ads are less intrusive and make for a better overall user experience. When they’re in-app they also tend to stay on-screen and are therefore better for viewability (another hot topic doing the rounds currently). This all makes for greater awareness: for example, IPG Media Labs recently conducted an eye tracking study showing that consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than banners.

It’s not all rosy for native – yet. There is limited inventory that can actually support native mobile video in-stream. This is where the onus is on us as an industry to enable publishers to embrace this format, by providing clear, concise and up-to-date SDKs.

Talking Mobile, a resource for MMA Members, marketers and mobile innovators

Stephen Upstone
CEO & Founder of LoopMe

Talking Mobile is a resource for MMA Members, marketers and mobile innovators to discover and voice opinions around industry news, innovation and points of view. People can also find out more about the MMA UK and local activities and initiatives. If you would like to contribute please write to sally.harvey@mmaglobal.com with a clear proposal of what you would like to cover.

We are very fortunate to live and work in the greatest period of media innovation ever seen: rapid, persuasive and global. This is the mobile era and the change that we will see over the coming years will eclipse anything that we have seen before.

Dramatic change in consumers’ media habits due to the adoption of mobile smartphone and tablets create the perfect canvas to re-engineer marketing and advertising, globally, creating big winners and losers across all parts of the marketing ecosystem.

In the mobile era the MMA’s mission to make mobile marketing indispensable to marketers has never been more important.