It's a typical night at home. You're in sweatpants, washing dishes, and streaming NPR from your phone. The news stops, and a voice says, "Support for NPR comes from Ford. Ford is also proud to partner with StoryCorps to present real goodbye moments between families on college campuses. To hear one of these stories, say 'Take me there.'"
"Take me there," you say. You don't know what you're getting into, but at least part of you wants to follow along. And it does take you there. StoryCorps starts to play.
Turns out, you can talk back to ads this way. The interactive NPR spot was created by XAPP Media, a young interactive audio company that hopes to bring new profits to digital radio. The idea is to show the sponsor---in this case, Ford---that you're not only paying attention but engaged enough to respond. And XAPP's ads do this in a way that neatly dovetails with what you're doing at the moment. "It's about making it simple, spontaneous, convenient," XAPP CEO and co-founder Pat Higbie says.
XAPP isn't the only company working to better tailor online ads to the environment in which they're being consumed and to make them more interactive wherever that might be. Google, the internet's largest ad company, just announced new ads for its mobile search engine that ask you to swipe high-res images, something you're more likely to do on a phone. Advertising outfit InMobi offers in-app calls-to-action (call now to test drive!). And a young startup called Zentrick has helped Activision's Call of Duty create an ad that acts like a game (shoot the targets!).
In short, digital ads are working much harder to get your attention---and to prove they've gotten it. That involves weaving the ad into your particular online experience in new ways, whether you're listening to a podcast in your kitchen or surfing the web on your phone.
We now search, read, listen to, and watch as much, if not more, digital content on our phones than on the desktop. Facebook, The New York Times, and Coke all want to reach you wherever you are, whatever you're doing, no matter how small the screen or limited the ad space. But while digital advertising reached a record-breaking $50 billion last year, mobile only accounted for one-fifth of this total. Companies like Google and XAPP are pushing to change that.
On a small screen, it's easier for you to escape---to scroll away, tune out, or exit. As a result, it's harder for ad companies to know exactly how much your eyeballs and ears are worth. But with new interactive ads, ad companies and advertisers don’t just know when you scroll, click, or leave. They know how much you wanted to know, what made you care, or if you don’t want their product at all. ("Tell me more!" versus dead silence.)
You may experience these new ads as little more than an annoyance. But for ad companies, the hope is that their ads can deliver stuff that you want, like an episode of StoryCorps or a quick thrill from a game, and make more money, too. Ultimately, these ads pay for the service you're using. It's the way the Internet works---and not just on your PC anymore.
