Farzad Jamal, Vdopia’s European Vice President, looks at how entertainment brands are tackling mobile advertising and the lessons for other marketers looking to crack the medium.

Just 4% of mobile ads now run by entertainment brands are banners, dropping from 14% in just six months. The other 96% are video and rich media formats as entertainment marketers rightly turn to these formats to take advantage of people’s increasing video consumption on mobiles.

This transformation of the mobile ad landscape is pretty astonishing, however, entertainment brands are simply following the audience. comScore data shows about 23 million Britons view entertainment content on mobiles and they’re over 40% more likely to recall ads than the average mobile owner. Nielsen data shows the sector accounts for 15% of UK smartphone app time – behind only social and games. The number of mobile ad campaigns we’ve run for entertainment brands is up 46% and it’s now the highest spending sector on this format.

Analysis of the video ads reveals that 10 second versions are the strongest performing formats, despite only accounting for 3% of advertiser spend. The Video Performance Index (VPI) – a measure of the effectiveness of video ads by completion and click through rates – shows that 10 second ads are 65% more effective than the average video ad. Between them, 20 second and 30 second versions account for nearly three-quarters of entertainment brands’ mobile video ad spend but they’re 27% and 13% less effective, respectively, than the average.

You would expect shorter ads to have a higher completion rate but, generally, the shorter the ad the more likely people are to engage with it – for example, 10 second ads are twice as effective as 20 second ones – so it’s surprising to see budgets still heavily inclined towards 20 and 30 second versions.

This may be due to marketers simply re-purposing TV ads for mobile, which is a viable solution if the ad can be shortened by removing any secondary messaging and adding an interactivity element. Even for a mobile-dedicated video ad, keeping the length short should prove to be a winning strategy for marketers.

The analysis also reveals that the share of campaigns involving multiple video ads, rather than just one version, more than doubled in six months from 16% to 34%. Entertainment brands tend to use multiple creatives in a single campaign before and after film or album releases or in a countdown to a TV premier. It’s a good way for driving engagement and something any marketer should consider for any new product or offer launch.

The report is available to download here.

The above blog was originally published on IAB blog.