This document discusses rich media mobile ads and the MRAID standard. It begins with an overview of the growing global mobile ad market and the role of ad SDKs and networks. It then covers various mobile ad formats like static banners and rich media ads. MRAID is introduced as a common API for rich media ads to access device capabilities through different SDKs. The document outlines MRAID implementation and future versions that will incorporate more device features. It concludes by noting how standards like MRAID help create portable ads across platforms and SDKs.

1. Rich Media Mobile Ads
Mukund Acharya & Rohit Dialani
@ Blr Droid 17th Meetup (23 Feb 2012)

2. Agenda
• Introduction to Advertising $$
• Ad SDK and Mobile ads ecosystem
• Mobile Ad Formats
• MRAID
– Implementation
– Examples
– Future versions
• Demo
• Summary
• Q&A
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3. Global mobile Ad Spend
• Expected to reach $24.5Bn by 2016 ($9.7 Bn figure seen in 2012)
• Expected that more than 66 Bn Apps will be downloaded per year until
2016
– Majority will be made up from free downloads at 87%
– Monetizing of such Apps will happen through Ads
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4. What is mobile AD SDK?
• Ad Network (specific) Software developer kit
• Typically available as a Java Archive (jar file) on android
• Used to integrate Ad request api into mobile applications
• Frees up developers from Ad system nitty-gritty, handling of different
creative (Ad) formats and other platform specific issues.
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5. Mobile Ad Call flow
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6. Mobile Ad Monetization ecosystem
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7. Static Banner Ads ( jpg / gif /png )
• Easy to create
• Needs no special handling for display
• Bandwidth friendly, low file size
• Cost effective for increasing brand awareness
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8. What are Rich Media mobile ads ?
• Banner Ads that can expand on prompt
• Full screen ads, or wrap around ads for app ‘takeover’
• Ads that feature video or animations
• Interactive ads that respond to gestures (like tilt, shake, swipe, touch)
• Ads that incorporate simple games
• Ads that incorporate dynamic information like location, time of day
(also known as smart ads)
• Ads that can access advanced device functionalities (accelerometer,
camera, calendar)
Enhanced User engagement + Higher Click through rates
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9. Fat Finger clicks- GoldSpot Media study
Stats from millions of static & rich
media banner imps for campaigns
delivered in Q3 ’12 over GoldSpot ad
platform.
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10. So far so good
• But Ad designers often break usability rules to grab the user's
attention.
• Different apps (using Ad SDKs) have disparate API requirements that
creative developers must use to communicate with the SDK and the
app. Therefore, the same creative has to be rewritten, in order to run
across different apps.
• If an ad unit does not behave similarly across different media, the
campaign becomes complicated.
A standard that can work on any platform, on any handset will help
advertisers plan large scale campaigns across many publisher apps and
help centralize a fragmented industry sector.
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11. MRAID
• Mobile Rich media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID)
– On foundations laid by ORMMA (Open Rich Media Mobile Advertising)
– Driven by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
– Common (named) API for rich media Ads that run in mobile Apps
– A single HTML5/Javascript API that diverse SDK vendors can support
• Purpose
– MRAID complaint Ads from any Ad creator can render in any MRAID
complaint SDK
– Through the SDK, Ads can access advanced device capabilities
– Ads inside the App can expand, collapse, navigate to a landing page, etc
• Ads communicate with the SDK and vice versa
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12. MRAID Implementation
• Ad and SDK communicate via Native layer
Javascript – Native bridge
Bridge
– Ads are in HTML5/Javascript while SDK
object
SDK is built as native
• Bridge implementation
– Webview’s addJavascriptInterface
makes Java objects available to
Javascript
– Uses Webview’s loadUrl API that Bridge
mraid.js
executes Javascript from Native. object
– WebViewClient’s onLoadResource
and shouldOverrideURLLoading Ad Bridge.js
used to intercept and handle
WebView navigation Javascript layer
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13. MRAID expand flow
Container (state: default)
Ad SDK
mraid.expand()
Container (state: expanded)
Ad Ad
Container (state: expanded)
expands
SDK
State
change
Ad SDK
event
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14. MRAID future
• Future versions of MRAID promise to exploit lot more device
capabilities and features
• MRAID 2.0 (out since Sept 2012)
– Ads can access the calendar and add events
– Ads can insert photos into the device’s photo stream
– Ads can float/move inside the App
– Ads are orientation aware
• Beyond 2.0
– Accelerometer access - Ads can detect and respond to tilt, shake, etc.
– Open Maps
– Ads can send mail, SMS, etc.
– Ads can initiate phone calls
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15. Demo
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16. Summary
• Rich media Ads are now leveraging various functionalities of smart
phones and tablets
• For Rich media Ads to communicate with the Ad SDK, standards like
MRAID are evolving fast and being adopted by AD SDKs & Ad creators.
• Compliance to such standards make the Ads portable across platforms
(IOS, Android, etc) and across different network SDKs
• SDKs that implement MRAID can seamlessly render Ads from various
Ad vendors
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17. Q&A
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