Greystripe Introduces PC-to-Mobile Ad Targeting with ValueClick Audience Mapping

We at Greystripe are pleased to announce ValueClick Audience Mapping - a new way for advertisers to reach desirable online audiences on mobile devices.  Now a part of ValueClick, we’ve partnered up to create desirable mobile audience segments by analyzing billions of dollars in online transactional data, 200+ million monthly anonymous U.S. user profiles and 14 years of online experience.

“The market is demanding a cross-platform advertising solution.  Seeing this opportunity, ValueClick and Greystripe came together one year ago.  Today, we are proud to announce new targeting capabilities that highlight the incredible synergies of the combined companies.  This is truly an example where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Bill Todd, president of ValueClick Media. 

How does this technology work?

ValueClick Audience Mapping makes it easy to reach desirable audience segments.  To do so, we analyze proprietary first-party data for hundreds of attributes based on site traffic, clicks on ads and conversions (purchases, sign-ups, etc.) on ads.  We then target ads to hot spots, reaching your target audience with accuracy up to a one-mile radius. 

 “Audience Mapping is one of our largest product releases to-date. We have seen incredible demand for advanced PC to Mobile ad targeting since bringing this product to market,” said Kurt Hawks, general manager of Greystripe. 

Want to find out more?  Get in touch, or check out our press release!

Is bigger really better? When it comes to mobile ads, it just may be

Through an analysis of ads running in in our proprietary network, Greystripe has found full-screen mobile ads earn publishers and developers an average of 5 times more than small banner ads.  Perhaps this is why they love the full-screen advantage! 

With over five years’ experience in the mobile industry, Greystripe has not only found the monetization of full-screen ads to be better, but they also deliver an improved user experience.  This bigger and better ad format delivers ads at natural transition points in an application.  Unlike small banners, full-screen ads also conserve valuable screen space.

“Greystripe has consistently been the top performing mobile ad network for us!” said Tiffany Nasralla, digital marketing strategist at Moguldom.  “We have seen eCPM’s that are significantly higher than industry standards. Not only do they deliver high CPM’s, they also provide great customer service and are always responsive.”

Integrate Greystripe’s SDK in a few simple steps here: http://www.greystripe.com/developers/

When it comes to making movie decisions, mobile dominates!

With an abundance of rich content available on iPads and smartphones, its no surprise that busy consumers use their devices to make decisions about entertainment.  To gain insight into the habits of mobile users, Greystripe surveyed  546 iPad and smartphone users on its expansive network.  The study revealed a number of key findings around search behavior, advertising receptiveness and purchasing behavior. 

When taking a closer look at the movie searching process, Greystripe found that users love to use their mobile devices.  In fact, 53% of smartphone users and 27% of iPad users search for movie listings and times, as well as identifying theater locations!  These are key buying statistics that translate to results for movie producers.  Almost 70% of both iPad (68%) and smartphone (69%) users attend movies in the theater up to 6 times a year.

When it comes to making decisions about movies, users have a distinct preference in the type of content they engage with online.  Greystripe compared video, static movie images and interactive ads to find out how mobile users prefer to find out about movies.  Video was the leading answer with approximately half of iPad (45%) and smartphone (56%) saying they prefer movie trailers.  Second and third choices were static movie images and interactive ads.   

While the majority of users prefer to use their mobile devices to search, a select group of users are going a step further.  15% of smartphone users and 13% of iPad users purchase movie tickets with their devices.  eMarketer predicts purchasing will increase by 73.1% in 2012 equating to $11.6 million being spent on items such as event tickets.     

Want to find out more?  View the full report here.   

ValueClick’s Mobile Advertising Unit Greystripe Announces Four Global Office Openings, Nine Executive Hires and a Doubling of Headcount in 2011

Greystripe is today announcing impressive expansion within the company, strengthening its position as the go-to mobile ad network for brand advertisers in North America and Europe. Since May, the company has doubled its team and opened four new offices in the U.S. while expanding its presence in Europe.

The largest brand-focused mobile ad network has doubled the size of its sales, engineering and operations staff, allowing it to offer innovative new products to its base of thousands of brand advertisers, agencies and mobile publishers.

As part of the expansion of its team, Greystripe has opened new sales offices in Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis and Phoenix. They are also announcing nine new executive hires. These new hires are:

·         Brian Pearlman, senior account executive, from Millennial Media

·         Ryan Bleich, senior account executive, from AOL

·         Chris Backschies, regional sales manager, from WeatherBug

·         Terah Bocchi, senior account executive, from Belo Phoenix

·         Jeff Margolis, senior account executive, from Adfusion

·         Bill Kramer, regional sales manager, from quadrantONE

·         Josh Parker, account executive, from Specific Media

·         Matt Sexton, regional sales manager, from RadiumOne

·         Ken Yonan, regional sales manager, from Specific Media

“We’re excited to grow our team and continue expanding in the coming year,” said Kurt Hawks, vice president of operations for Greystripe. “In 2012, we look forward to using this growth to reach advertisers in every significant U.S. market, continue innovation and push the envelope by creating the best in brand advertising for mobile.”

In 2011, Greystripe launched two new mobile ad units: video advertising and its popular Ad Boosters. Both have seen impressive results. Over 55 brands have run mobile video ads, delivering over 200 ad creatives. On average, 50 percent of consumers have watched the entire video ads, with click-through rates between 1 and 3 percent. Ad Boosters are a next generation ad format featuring social media integration, local content and deals. These Boosters make mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users and have shown a 300 percent increase in click-through rates compared to similar ads without the Boosters.

After officially launching in Europe in February through a series of partnerships, Greystripe hired Tim Scoffham to head EU mobile growth. Scoffham came to Greystripe from 4^th Screen Advertising, where he was the commercial head. The company has now established a direct European presence in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.

Developer of the Month - OMGPOP

Meet our featured Developer of the Month, OMGPOP. OMGPOP was founded in 2006 and has been making real times games ever since. OMGPOP is a place to hang out, play free multiplayer games, chat and makes friends. We spoke with Wilson Kriegel, Chief Revenue Officer, to get the inside scoop.

What is your company's focus and where are they heading?
We are focused on developing fun, social, engaging and freemium gaming experience across platforms.

What inspired your company to develop apps and get into this space initially?
The company is several years old now and started as a casual flash multiplayer developer and gaming destination, called omgpop.com. We since evolved our offering to meet market opportunities and leveraged our expertise, which includes Facebook and Mobile.

Who are the company's founders and what is their background?
The founders of the company were developers and engineers.

How big is your team?
The company has 50 employees now, mostly all developers, artists, designers and engineers.

Which platforms (iOS, Android, mobile web) are you working on and what are the deciding factors for new platform support?
We happen to be one of the few developer/publishers on all platforms, web, FB and mobile. On mobile we focused on iOS at first, as the market was more mature and the monetization much stronger. We are now moving forward and releasing games on iOS, Android and Kindle Fire. Android is growing at a rapid rate globally providing huge scale, and we feel that there is a first mover advantage and also strong monetization upside for the Kindle Fire.

What should developers be thinking about as they develop their monetization strategy, specifically how they balance different revenue streams?
The audience, game genre, demo and platform. All of these have a huge impact on who, how much, how, how frequently a user base can drive revenues within a game. Building for ad monetization and currency monetization is very different and requires different expertise and resources pre- and post-game launch. Most often, casual game genre are ad supported with a premium upgrade and more immersive deep games tend to be virtual currency based.

Why did you choose to work with Greystripe?
After research, references and market information, Greystripe -- who has a long history in the mobile games market -- stood out as someone who could deliver on key requirements, from ease of integration of its technology, insights into ad monetization integration, account management and a premium advertising monetization offering contextual to the games vertical. This driven by strong fill rate of rich media ad types at high CPMs, with relevant advertisers that can deliver strong CTR.

ValueClick’s Greystripe Reports a 300% Boost in Click-Through Rates with its Newest Mobile Advertising Format

Greystripe, the largest brand-focused mobile ad network and a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is today announcing impressive results from its new mobile advertising units known as Ad Boosters, launched in October of this year. This next generation mobile ad format features social media integration, as well as local content and deals. They are aimed at making mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users.

Ad Boosters are placed around a 300x250 full screen smartphone ad making it more engaging and interactive with the use of a branded logo and multiple click options.  This improved engagement and interactivity drives higher click-through rates (CTR), as Ad Booster campaigns run to date have shown a 300 percent increase in CTR compared to similar-sized ad units that do not have the Ad Booster functionality.

Ad Boosters offer industry-focused and social units. Industry-focused ad boosters – a first for mobile ads – offer formats focused on targeted verticals, including: retail, consumer-packaged goods, automotive, travel, technology, consumer electronics, entertainment and health. These customizable boosters allow advertisers to direct users to multiple actions related to advertisers’ needs. Social Boosters allow brands to add buttons to engage users with social connections, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+. 

One of the first campaigns to run was a large consumer electronics brand that specializes in cameras. The campaign ran with two buttons: “Find Nearest Location” and “Watch Video”. The campaign has delivered 1.4 million impressions and saw 4 percent click-through rates – meaning 56,000 users clicked on the ad. Fifty-two percent of users clicked the locator button and 48 percent clicked the video button.

“Consumers’ mass adoption of the mobile web coupled with the rise in social media makes it a no brainer that mobile ads with social components will perform better than traditional formats,” said Kurt Hawks, VP of Operations at Greystripe. “We’re finding, despite a smaller screen than a PC, smartphones are becoming advanced enough to deliver more than a message but a true call-to-action – whether that means to find the nearest store location or participate directly in a location-based daily deal. Mobile ads are growing up and we’re excited to see consumers respond.”

The boosters, which are fully customizable, run in-app as an interstitial unit on iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Buttons include:

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

·         YouTube

·         Google+

·         Mobile Website

·         Daily Deals

·         Buy

·         Video

·         Coupon

·         Store Locator

·         Recommend

·         Download

·         Call

For more information, visit: www.greystripe.com/boosters

Largest Brand-Focused Mobile Advertising Network, Greystripe, Reporting 300 Percent Increase in Bookings for Mobile Video Ads for Q4

Since launching its mobile video ad format earlier this year, Greystripe, the largest brand-focused mobile ad network and a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), has seen an increasing number of brand advertisers flock to video.

The mobile video ad units were launched in June 2011. Since then, over 30 brands have run campaigns, delivering over 100 ad creatives throughout the Greystripe network on iOS, Android and the mobile web. The demand for mobile video ads has increased significantly in recent months; Greystripe has already seen a 300 percent increase in the number of campaigns booked so far in Q4 of 2011 relative to all of Q3 2011.

Universal Pictures and its agency, Ignited, ran a successful campaign with Greystripe to drive trailer views and promote the theatrical release of the new film The Change-Up. The two week campaign, targeting men 18-34, generated nearly nine hundred thousand complete trailer views.  A video of the ad displayed on an iPhone can be seen here.  In addition to entertainment, retail, consumer-packaged goods, insurance and electronics brands have all run mobile video ad campaigns with Greystripe. 

Greystripe is benefiting from the massive shift of broadcast advertising budgets into mobile, driven by the efficiency and effectiveness of reaching the 40 percent of TV watchers who are on their smartphones and tablets at the same time (Nielsen). In addition, advertisers are flocking to Greystripe’s video format because of impressive campaign results. On average, consumers have watched the entire video ad 50 percent of the time, with click-through-rates of between 1 and 3 percent. This is particularly impressive because users have the option to skip Greystripe video ads at any time.

“Mobile video ads will be the major growth driver for brand advertising spend in 2012, as traditional broadcast budgets continue to flow into mobile and online screens,” said Michael Chang, Greystripe general manager. “Greystripe is well positioned to take advantage of this video-fueled growth because of a fantastic ad user experience and our ability to serve more full-screen mobile video ads into premium content than any other mobile ad network – over 1 billion per month.”

For more information visit: http://www.greystripe.com/videoads/

Read More: 

• Greystripe Mobile Video Ad Bookings Rocket (Mobile Marketing Magazine)
• Video getting more play but viewer numbers stabilizing (BizReport)
• Greystripe Reports 300% Increase in Video Ad Bookings for Q4 (Wireless Week)