Inspector Gadget would have been dazzled to see that what was once only a part of his unique arsenal of gadgets is now widely available in every smartphone. Advertisers must have been surprised too, which may explain why many of them are just taking the first baby steps in mobile advertising, even though mobile ads reach one of every three consumers with smartphones. Nowadays, mobile is moving from the fringe to the mainstream, helped by the tailwind of higher performance and better ROI. According to eMarketer, mobile advertising spending is expected to double by 2014.


As in the early days of browser-based display, the innovation of mobile advertising elicits higher response from users. Mobile achieves the highest performance out of display ad formats for CTR, leaving Standard Banners in the dust. Mobile also outperforms browser based banners in branding performance.


In a new report on mobile advertising, MediaMind uncovers some of the best practices to help advertisers get the most value out of their mobile campaigns. These insights include:

• Which operating systems deliver the highest click through rate?
• Who clicks more: iPhone techies or BlackBerry executives?
• Is advertising in the evening better than at noon?




These and many other questions are answered in the full mobile research. With ever-expanding reach, higher performance, and evidence of solid ROI, mobile advertising can complement any display campaign.


To download the full research, click here.

Reach and Frequency metrics have been around for a long time and yet often times media planners are not able to make the best use of them. I’ve read many articles about the rigidity of the metrics and how it limits the work of a planner (for example here).

1)      Pull the frequency report on a regular basis for your campaign. That way you can see the cumulative impact on your frequency. As your campaign progresses over time, your distribution of unique will change as you reach new and repeat users.

2)      Pull the reports at the most granular level offered by your ad-server, in the case of MDMD you can do it at the Ad-level (sorry had to do a sales plug!).

3)      If your goal is to maximize your unique reach and if you want to optimize your placements, then do the following:

a.  Calculate the cumulative unique for each frequency at the placement level

b.  Calculate the contribution of unique by frequency for each placement to the site’s unique.
This will allow you to see for each placement what frequency puts you closer to the unique of the site. For example, placement 1 reaches 80% of your unique with a frequency of 3 whereas placement 2 does it with a frequency of 5, so in this case you can remove placement 2 from your plan and if you are satisfied with 80% reach, you would frequency cap placement 1 at 3 impressions per unique.

4)      If your goal is to maximize for conversions, here are the steps to optimize your placements:

a.  Calculate the “Conversions by Frequency” for each placement

b.  Calculate the “Conversion rate by frequency” and frequency cap when the conversion rate goes below your benchmark

c.  The other option is to look at the contribution of each frequency to the total conversions and utilize the 80/20 rule to frequency cap. You will frequency cap the specific placement once you have reached 80% of the conversions.

5)      If your goal is to maximize ROI, here are the steps to optimize your placement: (Warning! This is a bit math heavy!)

a.  Calculate the “Conversions by Frequency” for each placement

b.  Calculate the ROI for each frequency using the following formula [(avg. revenue * number of conversions – total impressions to frequency * media cost) / (total impression to frequency * media cost)]
If you don’t have the media cost (CPM) for each placement, you can use the eCPM for the campaign to give you an approximation.
Then just frequency cap when you have negative ROI!


Sounds complicated, reads complicated but it is just a bit of math applied to the proper report. (As a disclaimer we are making the necessary adjustments to our reports so you don’t have to do it! )


As one of my favorite persons in the world (Albert Einstein) said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.

-        Pablo Cohan,  Manager, Product Planning

Can you tell how many users have really seen your campaign?


Each time an online advertisement is seen by a user, a cookie is placed on the user’s computer. Advertisers then count the total number of cookies placed in order to determine the number of unique users exposed to a campaign. However, after a user deletes his or her cookie, a new cookie is placed in his/her browser and therefore the user is incorrectly over-counted again as a new, unique user.



This edition of the global benchmarks serves as a guide to measuring and planning accurate audience reach using the new ‘Adjusted Unique’ metric developed by MediaMind. ‘Adjusted Unique’ is a breakthrough in online measurement that adjusts for cookie deletion and was accredited as IAB compliant for measuring Audience Reach by the MRC.


In addition, MediaMind’s benchmarks provide detailed ad performance averages by industry vertical, ad format and ad size in over 50 counties. The benchmarks cover Click Through Rate, Dwell, Interactions, Expansions and Video Metrics.

To download the full report, click here.

In a crowded online advertising world, getting your product noticed may seem like an uphill battle. Therefore, it is important to notice when your climb loses its momentum. So how long can you ‘ride’ the same campaign, and when should you make a change?
To see how campaigns fare after their launch, MediaMind Research analyzed the performance of hundreds of campaigns through the first three months of the each campaign’s lifetime. The premise was that an average campaign length is three months and that this period of time is long enough to assess any trends in the performance curve.
The analysis examined the performance of hundreds of Rich Media campaigns, which started during Q3 and Q4 2010. For each campaign, MediaMind looked at the performance during the first three months of the campaign.

Performance was measured using Dwell Rate and Average Dwell Time, engagement metrics that measure the interest of users in the content of the banner. Dwell Rate measures the numbers of users that intentionally engaged with the banner and Average Dwell Duration measures how long they stay engaged.

Surprisingly, campaigns can go on for quite a long time without losing effectiveness. The results show that both Dwell Rate and Dwell Time remained pretty similar throughout the three months that were examined. Nevertheless, the first month showed a slightly higher Dwell Rate than the results during the second and third months. Dwell Average Duration, on the other hand, was 6 seconds higher in the second month, as compared to the first month, and maintained most of its lift during the third month.

It appears that advertisers do not need to worry about campaign and creative fatigue. Results remain relatively steady throughout the three months that were examined, contrary to conventional wisdom that campaigns lose momentum soon after their launch.

Furthermore, there seems to be no rule of thumb on what should be the optimal campaign length. Each advertiser can make his own judgment that should take into consideration the audience, campaign objectives and budget. Most importantly, it’s not the campaign duration, but the sophistication. Great creatives can go a long way, and keep users engaged for a long time… even three months.

Video of infographic poster outlining best practices for online financial advertising based on research recently released by MediaMind.

Click here to download the research.