Mountain View, CA — This week, two of the world’s biggest digital players started unveiling new ad units and approaches designed for how we use digital tools right now.
Let’ start with Facebook
All that talk about Ello* taking over the social world isn’t intimidating the blue giant. This week it announced what Ad Week dared to call “marketing nirvana.”
Facebook is unpacking its improved Atlas ad server this week – the one that’s supposed to give marketers incredible, cookie-free insight into Facebook’s 1.3 billion users.
They’re calling it “people-based” marketing that lets brands know a ton about an audience without learning their actual names/identities. And it works well outside of Facebook’s walls – delivering audience insight across the web and apps, rivaling the infrastructure built by Google over the last decade.
You’re going to hear media types call this “first-party data” – that means data that’s gathered through a direct relationship, like filling out your Facebook profile. This new program lets marketers use the same targeting capabilities that power campaigns on Facebook across devices and publishers.
(*We’ve got Ello invites, btw. Just let us know if you want in!)
Ok, onto Google
You might remember last month’s Comscore report uncovered a true era of mobile dominance: “Mobile has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for an astounding 60 percent of digital media time spent in the U.S.”
Google’s new ad units are designed to overcome the limitations of the small screen and deliver a truly branded experience – mostly based on user interaction (there’s one that’s a little more, shall we say, not optional). Here’s the new lineup:
- Anchor Ads that stay put even while a person scrolls down the page and can expand to a rich media experience
- Magazine Text Ads that bring glossiness to existing text ads in interstitials
- Video Ads With TrueView that will expand beyond gaming apps to bring video to many more apps. Brands only pay when a user chooses not to skip their ad.
- Mobile Lightbox Engagement Ads that dynamically resize to fit any ad size, making them quick-to-create, and brands only pay when users
- engage. Here’s an example they created for Kate Spade
If you’re deciding what to put in those fabulous rich media banners, think content. Video content. Ooyala’s Q2 Video Index Report found that 25 percent of online video activity happens on mobile devices—a spike of 400 percent compared to two years ago.”
Want one more? How about Tumblr.
It may be nearly almost impossible for brands to score a Google Doodle but they can now get a Tumblr Dot. It’s open to sponsors on special days like National Coffee Day when a little Starbucks cup took the place of the period in the logo.
