Advertising through mobile devices and digital magazines is now standard – and advertisers love it
Twenty years ago, ads were squares in newspapers and half or full pages in magazines. Selling advertising meant that you were selling a set of dimensions – the actual size of the ad. You may have created the ad for an advertiser, or perhaps they created it themselves.
Text-based ads, like those used in newspapers, include three main elements: the headline, the copy and the call to action (usually a phone number). More graphic-based ads like those used in magazines used the same elements, but would be highly designed and branded.
Flash forward ten years, and there are web ads, sold on a CPM (cost per thousand impression) or CPC (cost per click) basis. The same principles apply, only those newspaper ads have turned into Google Adsense, and the graphic ads run through ad servers and ad networks. In fact, an advertiser does not even need to talk directly to a publisher if he works directly through an ad network, the sort of “broker” of ads for certain spots on your website.
On the web, the call to action changes, and it is actionable. No longer does an ad include a phone number, but instead it says, “click here” or “download now” or “save $20 today” and the user can go directly to a sales page or contact form.
Eventually, publishers learned to package print and the web together in order to sell larger advertising packages without losing out on revenue from advertisers who abandoned print advertising. After all, web advertising has an explicit measurement. Any advertiser can easily see the return on his investment whereas a print ad has not even a lick of measurement accountability from the publisher.
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Moreover, now we’ve arrived at today, where not only are print and web ads married into advertising packages, but we have interactive digital magazine ads to work with. So as it was when web ads first came out, many publishers do not know what to do with these ads.
Packaging is still the key – you can sell larger ad packages by including, print, web, and mobile.
The perceived value of mobile and tablet digital magazine ads is higher, which is great. These ads take more time to produce, but they are more actionable than ever. Advertisers can now have their cake and eat it too. They can keep their ads in the print magazine, and get the ROI on the digital magazine versions with real-time reporting. The print ads may be static, but their digital magazine counterparts, which use the same real estate, can be clicked, interacted with and may even include videos or surveys.
Digital magazine advertising is a wonderful compromise for advertisers who love to buy a full page ad, but feel pressure to spend budgets on more measurable web ads.
Consumers like advertising through mobile and tablets too
In the surveys we’ve been watching from companies like eMarketer, Pontiflex and others, users enjoy interacting with ads. Smartphone users prefer ads to be simple, but tablet users enjoy more interactive ads. Coupon and discount ads are most preferable, while about a quarter of adult users enjoy and prefer video ads.
Even more importantly, the majority of adults prefer advertisements that open in the app when clicked, as opposed to the ad being pulled from a web browser and opening a new window – great news for digital magazines. Consumers prefer ads that take advantage of the device’s full features. Video, 360-degree views, striking photography and interactivity appeal the most to the users.
Now it’s your turn — which digital ads perform best for your advertisers? We want to know!
