AOP scheme eyes mobile advertising boost

Media owners including The Guardian, Sun and Telegraph, plus multiple magazine publishers, are backing an initiative to standardise mobile media measurement in order to increase brand spend on the medium.

Metro

Sixteen Association of Online Publishers (AOP) members are participating in the scheme, also backed by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), aimed at standardising mobile ad formats and the way publishers report the effectiveness of campaigns.

The scheme, first revealed by Marketing Week, will also see media agency Mindshare provide creative units on behalf of its automotive and FMCG clients to be served as expandable rich media ad units.

As part of the study, research agency ComScore will lead the investigation into how these units perform, as all of the parties concerned seek to simplify how mobile ad units are traded.

Currently the mobile ad trading market is fragmented in terms of how creative units are served and analytics are reported.

Tim Cain, AOP head of research and insight, says: “By addressing selected barriers together focusing on premium mobile display with agency and client buy-in, we can create more wide-reaching, consistent, effective ads for the entire mobile industry, helping buy side and sell side alike.”

The full list of publishers accounts for 25 per cent of the UK mobile ad market, around 6 million monthly users, according to AOP figures.

Participating media owners include: Bauer, CBS, Conde Nast, Future, Guardian, Global Radio, The Sun, Telegraph, Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press, IPC, Trader, Hearst, Incisive, RTE, and Sift.

The inter-trade body initiative is among a number of schemes geared at increasing the value brands attach to mobile ad units as online audiences increasingly migrate to tablet and smartphone devices.

Earlier this month, the IAB published its annual online ad spend study for 2012 demonstrating UK digital spend slowed slightly in 2012 as more marketers chose to experiment with mobile formats, which command cheaper rates than desktop.

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