Rich Media Ads from Crisp Wireless with Boris Fridman

Podcast: Play in new window

As Boris Fridman, CEO of Crisp Wireless, spoke with me at CTIA in San Francisco recently, I reflected on how far mobile advertising has come in only a few years. Still dominant, but with much less sex appeal, SMS creeps across most of the five billion phones on Earth. Unless you have a smartphone. Then you may have a revelation, as rich media ads magically appear.

What mobile advertisers, brands, agencies and publishers accepted as “mobile advertising” a few years back now resembles a stuck Wall Street ticker tape. Not too exciting unless your company’s stock symbol shows.

But old media yields to new media channels and exciting content, including advertising that consumers once avoided. You wouldn’t buy a black-and-white TV when high-res HD sets grace the walls of electronics stores.

Likewise, super high-res, large screen iPhones, iPads and Droids have changed the ad game. The engagement bar is raised and smartphone owners expect rich media ads to look as good as their favorite mobile website or video streaming service. Boris Fridman talked about this as we chatted about the changing landscape of mobile advertising.

In my podcast interview with Fridman, he talks about “…enabling advertisers to reach consumers in new and engaging ways.” He speaks of cross-channel advertising executed across a wide range of mobile devices.

The excitement of CTIA permeated the press room as we spoke. Outside, over 10,000 attendees were excitedly talking about wireless health, mobile Internet growth and smartphone fever. In the exhibit hall, Samsung Mobile had a booth as large as a small retail store with reps closely guarding the company’s new Samsung mobile tablet.

In another room, others were talking about M2M (machine-to-machine) wireless applications. Walking around the huge Moscone West complex, hoards of attendees clung to their smartphones like appendages to the human body. You could almost hear the buzz of RF signals permeating your body.

But back to rich media advertising reality. It’s absolutely clear to me that the future growth of the industry is dependent on creative, interactive mobile advertising. Advertisers pay for mobile content creation and delivery. No advertising, no cool mobile apps or tantalizing mobile websites.

Just as television, radio and print media grew primarily through advertising revenues, mobile must do the same. Mobile publishers, brands, advertisers, application developers, ad networks–the entire ecosystem–must maintain mobile’s surging growth through creative, addictive advertising.

So sit back and listen to a man who has strong opinions about fragmentation in the mobile ad industry and the growth of HTML5 among publishers. Fridman also comments about:

Want more? Listen to my podcast interview with Tom Foran at Crisp.

Further Reading

Jumptap partnership

Boris on Twitter

Crisp Wireless on Facebook

Crisp and AdMarvel partnership

What Boris thinks about Quattro Wireless/Apple iAd

Mobile Marketer Article (Boris on fragmentation)

Tagged as: boris fridman, crisp wireless, rich media ads