MMA Issues Guidance Report on Mobile Native Advertising

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Dec 17, 2015) - Today, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) released a "Guidance Report on Mobile Native Advertising" that highlights the unique power of mobile native as well as best practices for both advertisers and publishers. This report marks the culmination of a pivotal year for native.

Insights drawn from case studies throughout 2015, as well as from the MMA SMoX studies, indicate that mobile native is extremely effective in engaging consumers. More specifically, when optimized for frequency of exposure, mobile native advertising performed as much as 10 times better compared to mobile display advertising at similar frequency.

The report shows how mobile native has moved from novel to mainstream and offers guidance to brands and publishers on how they can recognize increased success, making mobile work even harder.

"Over the course of the past year, the MMA's Mobile Native Advertising Committee members have collaborated to share their learning on what makes mobile native advertising stand out to users while matching the form and function of a publisher's environment," said MMA Chief Strategy Officer Sheryl Daija. "As a result of these learnings and the insights from SMoX, we know there is greater attentiveness to the content, creating a need for different rules and best practices to maximize the performance of mobile native advertising."

The report focuses on four key tenets: relevancy, transparency, creative optimization and measurement and provides unique guidance to both marketers and publishers with four actionable steps:

Advertisers:
1. Identify the environments and publisher contexts which are most relevant for their campaign and customize the messaging and format accordingly
2. Spice up the ad creative to catch the eye of the user
3. Maximize exposure by leveraging social and viral trends for advertising in social feeds
4. Identify the direct response metrics and the end conversion metrics that impact their business and optimize campaigns towards achieving them

Publishers:
1. Improve the relevance of the advertising message by using 1st party and 3rd party data to create narrow targeting cuts for native ad formats which blend with the context and visual appeal of their app
2. Build trust with the user by disclosing that a unit is an advertisement along with the name of the advertiser
3. Identify the most appropriate placements within the mobile site to balance content with advertisements
4. Create a more persistent awareness of the ad unit by modulating the refresh rates based on the content type and user behavior

"As the native format continues to popularize as an option of choice for optimal effectiveness, our cross-industry committee sees this as a perfect opportunity to codify best practices for publishers and advertisers alike," said Co-Chair Bob (Babak) Bahramipour of InMobi. "By delivering working tenets for mobile native advertising now, we urge the industry to adopt these principles consistently so that consumers will benefit through an industry standard of compelling and material user experiences."

This MMA Mobile Native Advertising program currently has over 30 member companies. Any MMA member company is welcome to join this initiative, and if interested please contact us at committees@mmaglobal.com.

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)
The MMA is the world's leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association comprised of more than 800 member companies, from nearly fifty countries around the world. Our members hail from every faction of the mobile marketing ecosystem including brand marketers, agencies, mobile technology platforms, media companies, operators and others. The MMA's mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Anchoring the MMA's mission are four core pillars; to cultivate inspiration by driving the innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for the marketing organizations through fostering know-how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and advocacy. Additionally, MMA industry-wide committees work collaboratively to develop and advocate global best practices and lead standards development.

Mobile Marketing is broadly defined as including advertising, apps, messaging, mCommerce and CRM on all mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Members include: American Express, Colgate-Palmolive, Dunkin' Brands, Facebook, Ford Motor Company, Foursquare, Google, Group M, Hewlett Packard, Hilton Worldwide, IKEA, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg Co., MasterCard, McDonalds, Mondelez International, Inc., Pandora Media, Pinterest, Procter & Gamble, Razorfish, R/GA, Starcom Worldwide, The Coca-Cola Company, The Weather Company, Unilever, Visa, VEVO, Vodafone, Walmart, xAd and many more. The MMA's global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations in Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC). For more information about the MMA please visit http://www.mmaglobal.com.