How can mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies deliv­er the most effec­tive mobile adver­tis­ing cam­paigns in the age of screen fragmentation?

That’s a ques­tion at the fore­front of Ed Haslam’s mind. The senior VP of mar­ket­ing with San Fran­cis­co-based video ad-tech firm YuMe recent­ly vis­it­ed Lon­don for the Chang­ing Media Sum­mit, dur­ing which he squeezed in an inter­view with The Guardian newspaper.

Why the three c’s mat­ter more than size

Tech­nol­o­gy has brought us a pletho­ra of dif­fer­ent screen sizes and devices, from desk-top bound Goliaths to tablets to smart­phones. And recent research from YuMe sug­gests that screen size does mat­ter — as Haslam explains:

“So larg­er screens are more emo­tion­al then small­er screens in terms of bio­met­ric mea­sure­ment.  But what mat­ters more is some­thing we call the three c’s, which are: clut­ter, cre­ative and con­text.  So while screen size mat­ters, what mat­ters a lot more is what is on the screen as it relates to adver­tis­ing efficacy.”

There’s more to mobile adver­tis­ing than geolo­ca­tion and direct response cam­paigns (entic­ing users to respond in the moment), Haslam believes. Mobile devices, espe­cial­ly tablets, aren’t mere­ly func­tion­al, on-the-hoof gad­gets and can be used in a more “leaned back way”, some­thing brands are increas­ing­ly inter­est­ed in. The exam­ple offered by Haslam is switch­ing from por­trait to land­scape views; when we do this, his research sug­gests, we’re like­ly to be in a more relaxed mood and more recep­tive to brand messages.

The year of the app and the video beckons

A chal­lenge for the indus­try is respond­ing effec­tive­ly to brand require­ments: they tend to want direct response cam­paigns and brand cam­paigns, he says.  Because screen users are increas­ing frag­ment­ed cam­paigns need to focus not just on one screen, but on hold­ing a user’s atten­tion across sev­er­al. Cross screen cam­paigns will be more effec­tive than sin­gle screen alter­na­tives, he argues.

Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion is evok­ing new ques­tions from brands, Haslam says, like how can that new screen be used?  What can it do that couldn’t be done before? The mas­sive growth in tablets has dri­ven this ques­tion­ing fur­ther and agen­cies must have some answers.

Haslam believes that as tablet and smart­phone pen­e­tra­tion increas­es, and as con­sumers become con­stant­ly con­nect­ed through WiFi or 4G net­works, adver­tis­ers will turn to reach­ing con­sumers with­in apps or through video con­sump­tion, as both are set to explode in 2013.