August 9, 2016
Submitted by Jun Group
About 90% of what people do on a mobile device occurs in-app, vs. 10% via the mobile Web. One of the most exciting areas of in-app advertising is working with native advertising on mobile devices.
Jun Group is in the business of getting consumers to engage with branded content on mobile devices. Most of that content is video and much of it is rewarded video.
There are challenges in making native advertising successful on mobile devices. For example, many advertisers approach mobile in the same the way they would desktop advertising. That’s a mistake, according to Mitchell Reichgut, CEO, Jun Group, an ad platform for native content.
While the mobile Web is important, the consumer “journey” has changed. The desktop mindset is that you start with a Google search. Mobile doesn’t work that way.
Reichgut’s take on branded or native content is that it’s video or another experience that’s intended to be more engaging and more targeted. “It can be longer form. Branded content is meant to be enjoyed and passed along,” he said. In addition, Reichgut reports that he sees video completion rates for branded content between 80% to 90%, but that depends on length of video.
With rewarded video, he said, there’s a value exchange that comes from apps vs. the mobile Web because people are opting in to spend time with a brand. They volunteer to get game points, a digital utility, or some other type of “reward” that lets them advance to the next stage of a game, access a hack, additional content, and more. Another advantage: “You’re not interrupting them,” Reichgut said. The upside for marketers is that rewarded video, which offers branded content within an app, offers demographic data.
Reichgut cited a recent native campaign for a potato chip brand that saw 9% of people taking an action after they viewed the video. That’s much higher than the 3% average engagement rate. Consumers were asked to take an action after they watched the video: share a message, tweet, etc.
The campaign content, targeted to millennials, reached them in apps where they spend a good deal of time.
“When you don’t interrupt people and have good content that’s made for the environment in which it’s presented, it’s amazing what comes back to you,” Reichgut said. “The context is important.” In this case, the content appeared in gaming, entertainment, and sports apps.
Other upsides for using apps to deliver video around native content: “Apps are great at protecting against fraud,” Reichgut said. And people are less apt to use ad blockers with apps they’re deeply involved in and use frequently.
While some brands are often hesitant to work on a smaller screen, native video content is powerful because it takes up the entire screen. And it drives people to the mobile Web as well.
That said, there’s still a lot of education that needs to be done on the value exchange on native advertising and rewarded video. Reichgut maintained that rewarded video is built for a cross-screen, mobile-first environment. “It’s brand-safe, free of fraud, and can deliver editorial adjacency because you bring the right consumer into the editorial experience."