5 Ways HTML5 Is Changing Mobile Advertising

Close to five years have passed since the early mobile ad networks emerged with basic banners on mobile screens. Despite numerous attempts at innovation, there are still very few mobile ad unit technologies being used by major networks or agencies. Many have just relied on the same basic banner ads that were used five years ago.
When Apple's iAds came on the scene several months ago, it was considered a game-changer. While Apple believed it was setting a new standard for the quality of ads on the mobile device with its use of animation, sound and video, the company has since drawn criticism for production delays of initial iAd campaigns. Apple has managed to introduce a few campaigns from top brands including Nissan and Unilever in the past few months, but its early challenges underscore the struggles with innovation that have plagued the industry over the years. The question is, why?

The Introduction of HTML5

A large part of the issue is that many rich media ad technologies are proprietary and closed platforms. None of the mobile ad integration kits for apps are interoperable with each other. The technical barrier for running a mobile rich media ad campaign is very high.
With iAds demonstrating that HTML5 is a viable option for mobile ad development today, the industry will see more progress. HTML5 and compatible HTML5-based ad formats will have a major impact on the future of the mobile ad industry. Here are the five reasons why HTML5, an open standard, will change mobile advertising the way Flash changed it for the desktop.

1. Open Systems Support Speed And Scale

When ads are programmed using HTML, agencies can give the work to their own designers and developers. It saves time and money to put the creative control back in their hands instead of having to go back and forth with third-party vendors or ad networks.
Some rich media ad technologies may be based on open standards, but they are generally all closed systems where it often takes one or two months to get the ad unit developed and tested. After all, earlier HTML versions resolved the content creation bottleneck in the early days of the world wide web as well.

2. HTML Can Run Anywhere

HTML can be downloaded from an ad server and displayed on the web and in apps. The ability of apps to render HTML is a huge boost. Android and iOS support HTML5, and soon all major smartphone platforms will follow suit. The same can't be said for Flash and other Flash lookalikes. One of the key issues in extending desktop campaigns to mobile is dealing with the fragmentation of that audience by diverging technologies.
Let's take the recent extension of the Nissan Leaf campaign to mobile platforms. One vendor could have developed a Flash creative for the desktop web. Another vendor could have converted it to run in Android apps. Yet another vendor might support it to run on mobile web browsers. Apple could also use iAd to run the campaign on iPhone apps. Imagine the headache a media agency would have customizing that ad to run across all of these different platforms. HTML5 can be leveraged to solve that.

3. Tracker Compatibility

What's the point of extending a campaign to mobile devices if you can't get the delivery and brand interaction metrics right? This is another point easily solved by the unifying nature of HTML/JavaScript-based ad units. Agency ad servers can track banner impressions and clicks across many devices and technologies and produce a single report.
This is a more reliable approach than collecting various reports out of different mobile platforms, which are all calibrated according to different methodologies. For example, most in-app mobile ad servers count an impression every time an ad is requested from the server, while web servers track an impression only after the ad is displayed.

4. Lightweight Ad Display Engine

You may well be aware of the ongoing HTML5 vs. Flash debates happening across the industry and the web. One of the arguments in that debate is the potential quality and performance problems that plug-in technologies can suffer. With rich media advertising for mobile, much of the same concept stands.
When a mobile application developer integrates a rich media ad kit, it adds weight and can cause application performance issues. On the other hand, the code involved in leveraging the browser as the ad rendering engine is comparatively lighter and simpler, thus more suitable for resource-constrained mobile devices.

5. Design Flexibility

Last but not least, HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript offer remarkable design flexibility and capability, which is unlikely to be trumped by a single technology compatible with so many mobile devices. It doesn't require downloading of potentially insecure pre-compiled binaries and it doesn't necessitate any heavy UI framework to be bundled with the app. For instance, the iPad apps for The Wall Street Journal and Popular Mechanics use HTML5 exclusively for their advertisers.
Based on a dozen or so major app publishers I've spoken to, the majority are either already serving HTML5-based display ads in their mobile tablet or smart phone apps, or they are considering it in the near future. There are even app developers who are collaborating on open source software development kits to create a rich media mobile advertising standard based on HTML5 with some extra native application hooks.
While display advertising on mobile devices may not reach full maturity for a while, the need to de-fragment the platforms on a technical level is key right now. Bridging the gap between the mobile web and apps has pushed the technology to evolve towards a cross-platform architecture. It is an exciting time for interactive developers and designers.