IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence had another tremendously productive year in 2015. The entire IAB is increasingly working as a “mobile-first” organization, responding to the industry as more and more online activity happens via smartphones and tablets. The numbers continue to bear that out: as of our latest Internet Ad Revenue Report, U.S. mobile ad revenue hit $8.2 billion in the first half of 2015, which means mobile accounted for 30% of internet advertising revenue.
It’s impossible in the space of this post to recount all of IAB’s mobile-related output this year. We’ll focus on the highlights, organized according to the longstanding strategic imperatives of the Mobile Center: helping marketers understand mobile’s value; improving mobile creative that scales; rationalizing mobile measurement; improving supply chain issues; and ensuring the regulatory environment stays favorable.
Helping Marketers Extract the Full Value of Mobile
In 2015, we launched our second annual series of Make Mobile Work webinars aimed at providing marketers and agencies with practical, jargon-free advice on making mobile advertising work for them in the increasingly omni-screen world. Webinar topics included: succeeding with mobile video advertising; understanding cross-device measurement; and promoting mobile apps. We had over 1,000 registrations across the three webinars, and we saw a cumulative attendance of nearly 700.
In addition to Make Mobile Work, we released an array of research studies that helped illuminate key trends in mobile. Among the highlights were:
- Marketer Perceptions of Mobile: 2015 Edition. We released the third in our ongoing series of marketer research studies, looking at a wide range of mobile topics, including spending, opportunities and challenges related to mobile, metrics used, and ad formats.
- Moms and Mobile. We worked with BabyCenter on an extensive survey of mobile’s role in the lives of younger mothers. This study, “2015 State of Modern Motherhood: Mobile and Media in the Lives of Moms,” compared and contrasted moms in the U.S. with those in Brazil Canada, China, and the UK.
- Dads and Mobile. To honor the other half of the parental matrix, Millennial Media and the IAB collaborated on a piece looking at dads and mobile as well.
- Gen Z/College Students and Mobile. We partnered with Qriously to release a report looking at how Gen Z and young Millennial college students think about and use their smartphones, reinforcing the central role mobile plays in their lives.
- Global Mobile Video. We released a comprehensive survey of smartphone video viewers providing a comparative view of mobile video across 24 countries.
Improving Mobile Creative that Scales
The IAB Tech Lab this year did an outstanding job evolving the existing IAB creative ad format standards for a cross-screen world. We released new iterations of the Display Creative Format Guidelines and the Digital Video In-Stream Ad Formats, both of which adapt IAB’s foundational ad sizes to a world where HTML5 is the primary standard for ad creation.
In addition, the Tech Lab also released an update to the IAB’s HTML5 for Digital Advertising Guide, helping ad designers transitioning to HTML5. The new edition of the guide has been streamlined for ad designers. It also features additions to the guide’s resource wiki where more technical details can be found. The upgrade serves as a companion to the new Display Creative Guidelines.
Finally, in March IAB released the MRAID Video Addendum. This facilitates delivering VPAID video within MRAID interstitial ads, simplifying creation, delivery, and measurement.
Making Mobile Measurement Make Sense
This year saw the cross-industry “Making Measurement Make Sense” or “3MS” project firmly evolve into “4MS.” We worked closely with the Media Rating Council (MRC), contributing to their interim guidance on mobile viewability and the upcoming mobile viewable ad measurement guidelines. We look forward to working with the MRC and our other industry partners to help the mobile industry transition from served impressions to viewable impressions in 2016.
Additionally on measurement, in 2015 the Mobile Center published a “Digital Simplified” document that explains Mobile Ad Engagement Metrics. This piece builds on IAB’s groundbreaking “Defining and Measuring Digital Ad Engagement in a Cross-Platform World.” This document helps bring order and clarity to industry conversations about understanding consumer engagement on mobile screens.
Improving Supply Chain Issues
This year the Mobile Center published a Mobile Programmatic Buying Playbook, outlining ways that mobile programmatic is similar to programmatic buying more generally, and also areas (for example, around lack of cookies, and importance of location data) where it diverges. We also published Marketing ROI and Location Data, which describes how mobile location data is being used to measure foot traffic in stores, creating a new success metric for mobile, digital, and even traditional advertising.
Public Policy
In April, we hosted our 4th annual Mobile Center Washington DC Fly-In. We sponsored and provided panelists at the annual State of the Net Wireless conference, followed by a full day of meetings in both the House and Senate, discussing front-burner issues including data breach, trade, location, privacy, and tax deductibility. The meetings were both informative for those who attend, and incredibly valuable to IAB’s overall mobile policy efforts in Washington.
Conclusion
In addition to everything above, the Mobile Center team spoke at and hosted a myriad of mobile events, town halls, and round table conversations. We published a Tablet Playbook and a Buyer’s Guide to local digital advertising. We launched new working groups on connected cars, shopper marketing, and mobile user acquisition. We’re continuing to talk with members about emerging topics like augmented reality and internet of things. As always, the one thing we know for sure is mobile will change, tremendously and unpredictably, in 2016. We’re looking forward to helping our members and the industry continue to navigate the ever-changing mobile world.
