IAB Europe launches Mobile Brand Builders

The Mobile Brand Builders are a suite of five mobile brand advertising formats which offers a new branding environment to advertisers.

 Following on from the PC and Tablet in-page Brand Builder formats published last year, IAB Europe has been focusing on Mobile display which represents a double-digit proportion of display advertising spend in Europe (AdEx Benchmark 2013).

The Mobile Brand Builders’ recommendation aims to fuel the increase of brand advertising on mobile through Programmatic Trading by simplifying the landscape of mobile ad formats across Europe and reducing the processes and costs related with planning and booking national and Europe-wide brand advertising campaigns.

Gavin Stirrat, Chief Operating Officer at StrikeAd said: “The Mobile Brand Builders lay the foundation for brand advertisers to scale their brand communications via mobile whilst integrating effectively with other channels. This is thanks to a simple set of formats which will resonate with brands and are accessible via programmatic platforms.”

Markus Breuer, Director of Mobile and Emerging Channels at nugg.ad said: “The diverse number of small mobile formats has created an entry hurdle for advertisers and planners and prevented brand building via mobile. The Mobile Brand Builders aim to simplify this to make planning and booking mobile branding campaigns more efficient and enable maximum creativity with larger interactive formats.”

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7 key benefits

1. Only five formats recommended in total

2. Two-phase option (static or dynamic) for all formats to optimally support brand advertisers’ objectives and agencies’ creativity

3. The only format prescription within the suite is the pixel dimension for the static formats, the rest is a blank canvas giving flexibility to the advertiser/ creative agency

4. Recommendation of the already-popular 300x250 format to enable (programmatic) brand advertising across channels

5. A 16:9 TV compatible dimension to make brand advertising across TV and digital easier. By providing a 16:9 TV compatible dimension the suite is able to support in-page video advertising

6. Compatibility with other format recommendations – the Mobile Brand Builders are compatible with the more prescriptive IAB / MMA format standards and the more creative IAB Mobile Rising Stars

7. A best practice list to enable effective brand building in the mobile environment

A bottom up approach 

The Mobile Brand Builders were developed through a bottom up approach which consisted of a pan-European survey and desk research to understand the current formats landscape in Europe, and the current recommendations/ standards in place, e.g. the IAB / MMA format standards.

IAB Europe also undertook an outreach phase to gather feedback from the local IABs and major mobile DSPs to ensure the recommendation is suitable for the market place.

Next steps 

IAB Europe’s next steps will be to focus on responsive design formats and a Video Ad Formats Task Force will start to develop a recommendation for in-stream brand advertising across screens.