Medialets

A few months back, the MMA organized a Mobile “SWAT” Team — a working group composed of senior media executives representing publishers, media and creative agencies, ad networks, and technology providers like Medialets. The result is concise list of ad sizes that the mobile ad industry uses far more often than any others, released as the MMA’s Universal Mobile Ad Package v.2.0, now available for public comment.

This document represents an important step for the mobile advertising industry because it recommends a discreet set of standard mobile ad sizes for industry to adopt.

Ad sizes for both feature phones and smart phones are listed in the document. The sizes indicated for smart phones — the type of handset devices that Medialets serves ads to — are 300×50, 320×50, and 300×250.

It should be noted that these sizes are for banner ad formats — by far the most common ad format in use today. This release of the document does not indicate standard sizes for rich media expandable ads or interstitial ad formats. In our experience thus far, sizes of those ad formats tend to be more property-specific and, in practice, can be slightly less critical to standardize compared to initial banner sizes. The SWAT team will perform more research and discussion before a set of guidelines for other ad formats is released.

The SWAT team also agreed to offer initial guidance on mobile tablet ad unit sizes. The initial guidance for tablet ad sizes contains banner sizes such as 300×250, 728×90, and 1024×90. However, tablet ad sizes are a very dynamic subject right now. The market is largely dominated by one tablet device today, but new devices are coming to market and gaining traction. The MMA will continue to offer refreshed guidance for tablet devices every six months going forward.

Members of the mobile marketing industry are encouraged to submit comments on the Universal Mobile Ad Package to the MMA. Feedback will be reviewed and will be finalized and released in January 2012.

Medialets looks forward to continuing our collaboration with the MMA and other mobile marketing industry leaders to help foster additional standardization, efficiency, and effectiveness for the mobile advertising ecosystem.