Mobile users hate ads that slow down their mobile experience. This insider's guide to video pre-caching explains how new technologies are making slow loading ads a thing of the past.

1. Pre-Cached Video:
For a Seamless Mobile
Ad Experience

2. If you own a mobile device you’ve probably tried watching
streaming video content with a weak network signal. It's a
user experience characterized by slow load speeds and
poor video resolution.
When that slow-loading video is an ad, well, let’s just say
you the user are not exactly endeared to the brand that is
making you wait.. In fact a slew of recent studies have
shown that slow load times lead to all kinds of problems for
brand advertisers and may be contributing to the rise in ad-
blocking.
What is a savvy marketer to do? Get smart about
alternative mobile video technologies of course!
Because with mobile video pre-caching, the same mobile
videos could be launching instantly in full HD quality every
time. Read on to find out how!
Executive Summary
2
30%
of consumers
abandon mobile
video ads that fail
to launch within 5
seconds!1

3. 3
A brief history of mobile video...
Streaming video is without question the global standard technology for digital video advertising.
It’s important to understand that “streaming” video, or “buffering” a digital video live as it plays, was
originally designed for a desktop environment where, it was assumed, the user had a stable high-
speed data connection. Streaming is generally great for that particular use case.
The trouble is, when publishers and networks went looking for ways to provide mobile video
inventory, they took the same streaming technology they used on desktop and repackaged it as
“mobile”. However a mobile device can’t count on the same stable data-connection as desktop. A
mobile device is constantly moving around, from home wi-fi, to underground with no connection, to
a saturated 4g network and back.
It’s this variable connectivity that is creating low-quality video ad experiences on mobile.
Experiences that annoy users and that fail to deliver on the full promise of mobile video.
Pre-caching on the other hand is a truly “mobile-first” technology. Designed specifically to deliver a
more seamless mobile video ad experience. Unfortunately, as the industry has moved towards
programmatic buying it has continued to rely on streaming video because no standard existed for
selling pre-cached inventory programmatically… until now!

4. 4
● Videos launch instantly
● HD Quality
● Regardless of connectivity
● “Mobile” streaming
● Leaves people waiting
● Negatively primed audience!
Please Wait...
Vs.
What the difference looks like...
Pre-caching Streaming

5. Positive Priming with Pre-caching - #userexperiencematters
Priming is a term from psychology describing how an initial experience will influence an individual’s
perception of subsequent experiences either positively or negatively.
Priming happens all the time with digital advertising formats and can have a very real impact on
important brand metrics. One study from Carnegie Mellon University researchers1
found that negative
priming from interruptive ads like mobile streaming actually decreases purchase intent!
Here are two examples of priming with both Streaming and Pre-caching video ads:
5
Streaming
Slow-loading
ad blocks user
access to
content
Negative
Posture
towards brand’s
message
TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE #1 PRIMING EXPERIENCE #2 OUTCOME
Pre-caching
Instant Launch
in HD quality
doesn’t slow
user down
Positive Posture
towards brand’s
message
Better
Performance, Higher
Favorability, Higher
Purchase Intent
Poorer
Performance, Low
Favorability, Lower
Purchase Intent

6. User
opens an
app
User goes about their business inside the app
User sees
HD quality
video ad
instantly
6
Mobile videos that launch instantly and in full HD everytime.
Pre-caching is a very simple concept. It just means that the video ad is entirely loaded in “cache” - a
hidden file - before the user ever reaches an opportunity to see that ad unit.
Here’s how it works:
Invisible to user, no interruptions, everything happens in the background
1 2a
2b
3
App calls
Ad Server
Ad Server
Serves a
video ad
Video ad is
fully
loaded in
the app
Video
Inventory
is Opened
in App

7. 7
Conclusion… #UserExperienceMatters.
By designing a seamless user experience pre-caching
makes the entire prospect of engaging with digital
video ads a lot less painful for mobile consumers.
Users don’t want to see that buffering counter while
waiting for an ad to let them get on with their life..
They don’t want low quality video either.
Users want high quality video ads that launch instantly
and preferably enhance their experience in whatever
digital content they are consuming.
As an industry we owe it to users to get smarter about
how we deliver mobile video ads and pre-caching
technologies are a simple way to do that.

8. Get in touch
hello@smrtr.media
Sources:
1 Krishnan & Sitaraman, Video Stream Quality Impacts Viewer Behavior: Inferring Causality Using Quasi-Experimental Designs, Akamai Technologies, 2012