Intre­pid hope­fuls look­ing for media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing might do well to heed the advice of Sam Pat­ti­son, the Head of UK Sales at the in-con­tent ad plat­form, Vibrant Media, who has recent­ly blogged about how to make mobile media real­ly work for advertisers.

Obsta­cles

No one with any kind of expe­ri­ence in media jobs in the mobile phones adver­tis­ing space is under any illu­sions that it’s a tough mar­ket. Just take the dis­mis­sive pow­er of mobile devices: with a dou­ble thumb-click, the ban­ner ad that’s just appeared is toast. Con­sumers like this; they get to con­trol their view­ing, enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of free con­tent while dis­pos­ing of dis­tract­ing ads in the blink of an eye. Being “served” and being viewed aren’t the same.

Ads that appear around the con­tent can eas­i­ly be zapped and, as most pre­mi­um pub­lish­ers oper­ate with­out mobile-opti­mized web­sites, tra­di­tion­al ban­ner ads look cheesy and might even dam­age brands. And because mobile devices have become a priv­i­leged aspect of users’ per­son­al space, mobile ads that intrude here, Pat­ti­son says, “have the great­est poten­tial to offend and irritate.”

Solu­tions

Still feel like apply­ing for media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing? Well, if you catch Pattison’s drift, there’s every rea­son to look for­ward to a suc­cess­ful career. Mobile ad for­mats, he insists, absolute­ly must be com­pat­i­ble for every device and they must respond to native ges­tures like screen rota­tion or dou­ble thumb-clicks. That’s not just to deliv­er cre­ative­ly engag­ing ads, it’s to give the con­sumer control.

Research con­duct­ed by Vibrant Media found that 81 per cent of con­sumers favor ads they can ini­ti­ate them­selves; ignore this, and the strat­e­gy is on a hid­ing to nothing.

And, Pat­ti­son explains, they’re far more like­ly to ini­ti­ate an ad that’s rel­e­vant to the dig­i­tal con­tent envi­ron­ment they’re in when it’s served: 70 per cent say they’re inclined to ignore ads that lack rel­e­van­cy to the page con­tent. Ads that enhance the mobile con­tent expe­ri­ence will be much more suc­cess­ful in engag­ing them — and the ones that do this most effec­tive­ly tend to be nim­ble, in-con­tent mes­sages, Pattison’s research suggests.

And they’re more view­able than any­thing that can only be dis­played around the con­tent: those ads are a thumb-click away from oblivion.