BARCELONA — As mobile advertising booms, it’s likely much of the growth has come from the low-hanging fruit of desktop inventory, shovelled on to the small screen, and from standard mobile display banners.

But mobile advertising can do much more, and one of WPP’s divisions is recommending advertisers take advantage.

“There’s been a lot of focus on things like media optimization towards performance or different types of datasets, but a real under-representation of the importance of creative and optimizing towards performance,” says Paul Dolan, GM of Light Reaction, a mobile-centric, data-driven unit launched by WPP’s Xaxis last year.

“We actually believe, and our studies have found, that the more engaging, richer formats actually lead to better performance. And that’s what our study of perceptual science is all about, understanding how users emotionally react to what they see in front of them.

“Different formats for different types of clients can lead to better performance – either more outcomes or at a better price. And so by focusing in on creative in addition to data and media as optimization levers has been really successful for our clients.”

The IAB’s mobile phone creative guidelines were updated last year to account for new HTML5 ads, while its rising-star mobile formats describe new approaches that take advantage of modern smartphones, like filmstrips, pulls and sliders.

 

This video was is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of Mobile World Congress presented by Light Reaction.  Please visit this page for additional videos from Barcelona.