The fact is, despite significant growth in mobile ad spend, measurement of smartphone and tablet campaigns remains a challenge for agencies. The use of inconsistent counting methodologies across properties undermines performance analysis — it’s impossible to get a clear view of a campaign’s ROI when comparing disparate data. Further, different methodologies are also the cause of massive discrepancies, well over the industry comfort zone of 15%. Factors like these shake agency confidence in mobile and ultimately inhibit greater ad spend. The IAB/MMA/MRC mobile guidelines provide the industry with a clear course of action to remedy this.

One important component of the new guidelines – and also key to Medialets’ third-party ad serving methodology – is the counting of an impression only upon the successful delivery of an ad unit to a device. This is distinct from typical desktop practices, where an impression is counted when an ad is sent from the server without any confirmation of delivery to the device. By counting an impression after the ad code has been delivered, Medialets provides agencies with greater accuracy in campaign data, more confidence in the analysis of the performance of their campaigns, and a more credible data set on which to base billing.

Agency response to our move for accreditation has been overwhelmingly positive; it’s evident that better measurement is critical to the growth of mobile advertising. As a company whose mission is to enable effective and efficient mobile advertising at scale, we’re pleased to be the first third-party ad server to begin the process for the IAB/MMA/MRC guidelines.

To learn more about the guidelines:

• Guidelines for mobile web

• Guideline for mobile app

To learn more about Medialets third-party ad serving and rich media platform for mobile and tablets, contact us.

That insight has informed a range of Medialets products and capabilities that eliminate the obstacles that get in the way of large-scale rich media campaigns. Medialets’ innovations, from cross-platform in-app advertising, Medialets Muse™ and Medialets Creative Builder, to third-party rich media vendor support and real-time ad serving for mobile web inventory, together with best practices gained from unmatched experience in mobile rich media, have made it possible for us to enable the creation, delivery and measurement of thousands of mobile campaigns to more than 200 million unique devices.

It is our commitment to realizing the full value of mobile advertising for our customers that inspired us to address this next critical frontier of mobile advertising: buying and planning. To that end, following months of strategy and planning, we’re thrilled to share that today we have officially launched Medialets Private Marketplace. Medialets Private Marketplace is a fully transparent buying platform that lets advertisers directly plan, buy, execute and measure brand advertising on the world’s top mobile properties. The new platform combines our unmatched experience enabling mobile advertising with the unique insight we’ve gained into premium mobile inventory and the process by which its bought and sold.

In an industry rife with solutions targeted toward long tail and remnant media, Medialets Private Marketplace takes an entirely different approach and is uniquely and exclusively designed for premium advertising. Brands and agencies that leverage Medialets Private Marketplace find the same transparency, quality and control they expect from direct, premium media buys, while publishers benefit from the ability to precisely control what inventory is offered and sold, to whom, and at a price of their choosing. We’ve worked hard to build a model that supports and grows the important relationships between publishers and advertisers while making it meaningfully easier to execute more frequent and larger mobile and tablet campaigns.

2012 promises to be the best year yet for mobile advertising, and we’re thrilled to kick it off with the launch of this important new offering. We look forward to demonstrating how Medialets Private Marketplace can better position you to take advantage of the most valuable brand advertising medium available today.

To learn more about Medialets and Medialets Private Marketplace, contact us today.

Joe’s presentation, entitled “How to Use Cassandra As The Central Nervous System Of Distributed Systems”, discussed real-time analytics using NoSQL and distributed systems at Medialets. If you missed the December 6, 2011 conference, you can watch the Joe’s presentation below.

We recently chatted with Team One Producer Brooke Bauer about her first experience with Medialets Creative Builder. Working with her client Ritz Carlton, Brooke helped turn pre-existing assets into an elegant, engaging rich media creative for the NPR iPhone app.

Tell us a little bit about your role on your team?
Typically, I’m a producer so I would generally make sure that the creative intent was carried out through out the design of a campaign. I work with our in-house designers creating assets and passing it off to the correct vendors and sites.

How did you come to the decision to run rich media creative vs static for this campaign?
I know we get good results for rich media. It’s just usually a matter of how much of a budget we have for it. Rich elements are definitely more interactive and lend more excitement to creative. It catches people’s attention more than just a static image. And mobile definitely lends itself to rich media.

Medialets offers a range of different Blueprints™ to choose from. How did you help your client choose which Medialets Creative Builder Blueprint™ would work best for their campaign?
We looked at some of the samples and found one that seemed like it would go best with what we were envisioned. We had already created videos for the larger campaign, so having a place another place where we could use them and show them off was beneficial for us.

I understand this was your first time personally building rich media creative. Can you tell us about how getting started with Medialets Creative Builder?
First, there was the PDF guide for the Blueprint. I went in between that and what was in Medialets Creative Builder’s UI guide. I just identified what I needed and played around with adding images, seeing what worked, and what I could adjust. And I was able to just try different font sizes to figure out what my different options were.

Did Medialets Creative Builder help speed the time it took to get the creative running?
Yes, definitely. Medialets Creative Builder was definitely user-friendly, especially for me not having any experience before this campaign. It was all laid out there, including options that I may not have thought of if they weren’t in the tool.

Were there other factors, besides having so many great existing assets and the quick turn around required?
Budget. That was a big driving force behind using Medialets Creative Builder.

Having used Medialets Creative Builder once, are you considering using it for more creative for Ritz Carlton or other clients?
I’m sure we would. For me, it was a great experience. Medialets Creative Builder included a description of just what each asset was and where it went. It was helpful to just go through section by section. I think just being able to drag and drop things in was really quick and easy. I think anyone could pick it up.

To see the Ritz Carlton creative, visit Medialets Showcase.

Working for Team One since June 2010 as both an Associate Producer and an Associate Project Manager, Brooke has been involved with interactive projects including the Performance Site for Lexus and Banner Ads for The Ritz Carlton. As Associate Project Manager, Brooke manages portions of the project life cycle, helps lead and integrate projects across all disciplines, and participates in the daily wrangling of projects across multiple digital platforms.

Turning existing creative assets into a strong, rich mobile ad doesn’t require a team of engineers and designers, either. Medialets Creative Builder is a tool to ease and speed the building of engaging, track-able rich media ad creative without requiring knowledge of HTML5. A component of Medialets Muse™, Creative Builder offers a wide range of Blueprints™, each including a design guide and Photoshop template. Once logged in to Medialets Muse, you can quickly upload image files to the sharable asset drawer. Image and video files are then simply dragged and dropped from the asset drawer to the placeholders in the Blueprint.

Following a few best practices, Medialets Creative Builder offers clean, engaging Blueprints make the transition from static to rich a snap. Here’s how:

1. Consider the features and content you already have. Brand graphics, videos, and copy are all ingredients that most advertisers already have in their arsenal.

2. Use the Blueprint browser to search for the right fit. You can browse your options for re-purposing existing assets by format/size or device platform or feature. Blueprints are also viewable by campaign goal or vertical.

3. Review the size specifications in your Blueprints documentation and make any adjustments. Medialets employs the use of industry standard sizes for the banners and full-screen backgrounds in our Blueprints. Each Blueprint offers a Photoshop template to use as a guide should elements with in the ad require re-sizing.

4. Make it just a little richer by exploring your options. Many placeholders in the Blueprints also have “more options” links to enable animation, positioning, and features likes social sharing and video click through actions.

5. Review creative in progress. Once you’re clicked the “Save and Close” button, you can flight the creative to your device and view via Medialets Showcase App.

With minimal effort and as little as an hour, static ads are made richer, more engaging, and more valuable to the user and the brand. For more examples of rich ads made from Blueprints, see the Medialets Showcase.  Have a static ad you’d like to make rich? Speak with your account representative or contact us.

But there’s more to come! Today at 10am ET, Polo Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2012 Runway Show will stream live within the creative. It’s a first for mobile advertising, and the only live stream of this event. Check it out in The New York Times iPad app!

Get The New York Times iPad app here.

Today we’re excited to announce we are extending our 3+ years of best practices in advertising to the mobile web on smartphones and tablets.

This move importantly addresses one of the most fundamental challenges of the market – scale. By bringing the same exceptionally rich media capabilities, unparalleled technology and comprehensive measurement to mobile websites, Medialets extends the reach of premium mobile campaigns without adding complexity.

For advertisers and agencies, Medialets’ best of breed mobile rich media advertising capabilities across smartphones and tablets, operating systems, apps and now mobile web means easier and most cost-effective mobile advertising. A Medialets creative can now be built for multiple platforms, both in-app and mobile web, with access to consistent reporting across those platforms.

“Mobile provides new and meaningful ways for brands to connect with consumers and Medialets has lead the way in enabling those connections with its in-app rich media platform,” said Seth Hart, Global Associate Strategy Director of Starcom Worldwide. “The fact that we can now run Medialets ads on mobile web in addition to mobile apps gives us greater reach across premium mobile properties and, importantly, makes executing and measuring those campaigns much easier because we’re working with a single, proven platform.”

Sal Candela, Mobile Director of PHD, also weighed in: “As users are spending more and more time browsing the mobile web, marketers need to be able to expand their mobile campaigns beyond the app to reach the broader audience.  By supporting mobile web in addition to mobile apps, Medialets can enable us to deliver an identical brand experience across all mobile environments, and support ambitious mobile executions, which will be critical to marketers ability to best leverage the mobile environment to engage with consumers.”

For publishers, the same efficiency translates to a streamlined mobile operation, a more direct path to scale and increased revenue across mobile properties.

Like all Medialets-enabled campaigns, Medialets’ mobile web campaigns’ benefit from best practices gained from Medialets’ 3+ years of leadership in mobile rich media and Medialets Muse™, our unique set of products that simplify the process of mobile rich media advertising.

To learn more, contact us.

MRAID initiative defines a common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media advertisements, establishing a framework of principles and guidelines to help the mobile marketplace reach new levels of consistency, efficiency and effectiveness.

Said Anna Bager, Vice President & General Manager of the IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, “Standardizing the development of mobile rich media creative will be a strong benefit for both the mobile and the ad industry overall. MRAID provides creative developers with opportunities to achieve reach and scale efficiently.”

Today, the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence (http://www.iab.net/mmcoe ) released “Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions,” or MRAID (http://www.iab.net/mraid ), for public comment.

Medialets’ Universal SDKs for iOS and Android will be updated for MRAID support on release of the final MRAID specification.

For more details, view the full release.

This Medialets-enabled tablet campaign provides an immersive experience that pushes the boundaries beyond the innovation consumers have grown to expect within in-app advertising. Rich banners throughout The New York Times iPad app provide entrance to a full-screen, in-depth “catalog” of Polo products. Engaging, embedded video content and detailed product information are accessed through an elegant navigation bar, with a full Table of Contents just a tap away at all times. However, what is most notable is the campaigns built-in e-commerce: For the first time in mobile, this rich media ad incorporates a shopping cart directly in the HTML5 creative, enabling consumers to purchase Polo Ralph Lauren products as they browse through the in-depth “catalog” ad on their iPad.

“Mobile devices offer a rich creative palette that makes it possible to draw consumers deep into the brand experience,” said Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets. “But mobile also allows brands to bring consumers further down the funnel through features like lead capture and social media ‘connectors’. With the Polo Ralph Lauren campaign in The New York Times iPad app, we’ve taken that brand opportunity one step further by incorporating a shopping cart directly in the advertisement. This seamless integration is a first-of-its-kind in tablet advertising and further proof that mobile advertising offers unparalleled room for meaningful innovation. We’re thrilled to have collaborated with The New York Times and Ralph Lauren to enable another ‘first’ in mobile.”

In another exciting “first”, on September 15th, Polo Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2012 Runway Show will stream live within the creative.

Read more coverage of the launch in MediaPost and AdAge.

That’s why we developed a platform that delivers and measures the smartest rich media across tablets and smartphones, on different platforms, and takes into consideration the unique challenges and opportunities of mobile devices.

It’s scale-without-friction that inspired Medialets Muse™, the first creative dashboard for mobile rich media ads with its code-free Creative Builder for HTML5 ads, and it’s the motivation for our Create™ program that arms developers at Creative Agencies with tools and training necessary to build HTML5 ads.

And, as we push the boundaries of advertising’s creative possibilities, we’re also working closely with the IAB on the definition of MRAID, the standard creative API for mobile, to ensure that you benefit from the broadest compatibility as well as meaningful innovation.

But there’s more to be done to give advertisers the reach they want, enable the most revenue opportunities for publishers and fuel the continued growth of mobile advertising industry. That’s why we’re excited to share our latest achievement towards scale-without-friction: support for third-party rich media vendors in Medialets Universal SDK.

By enabling the more than 200+ premium apps that have integrated Medialets Universal SDK with increased flexibility in what ads they can run, we’re expanding the mobile opportunity for advertisers and agencies. For publishers, support for third-party rich media vendors unlocks additional revenue without the hassle of managing multiple SDKs.

Third-party rich media support is available today. In fact, we’re already working with a great roster of vendors – with more to come!

To learn more about Medialets’ third-party rich media support for your campaigns or apps, contact us.

Third-party rich media support is part of our latest release, Medialets Universal SDK for iOS 2.5 which also introduces a host of exciting new creative capabilities, new ad formats and performance enhancements. To learn more about Medialets Universal SDK for iOS 2.5, visit here or contact us.