This year over 500 billion photos will be taken worldwide, and nearly half of them will be taken on smart phones. Considering that all those mobile photos can be shared widely across text messages, group messages, social networks, blogs and more, it’s clear that mobile photography is massive.
So what opportunities do brands have to tap into all this mobile activity?
Brand engagement on mobile has been a difficult case to crack. Because of the intimate place mobile has in peoples' lives, it's important that any kind of mobile advertising is “harmonious” – i.e. native and additive to the users’ experience, not interruptive and out-of-context like a banner ad.
For the past few months, we have been quietly testing and iterating our own version of “harmonious” native advertising on mobile.
To Aviary – as the world’s favorite mobile photo editing platform – a great native advertising offering has to:
- Help brands engage authentically in the mobile photo workflow
- In a way that harmoniously adds value to tens of millions of end-users across our partner network
- And brings the necessary brand engagement to deliver ROI
We've been fortunate to work with some of the biggest brand names during our testing phase, including Red Bull, H&M and Atlantic Records. For these brands, we've created harmonious, native, branded experiences that users appear to love.
You can see the results of a recent campaign for Atlantic Records by searching Twitter or Instagram for "#EvilFriends".
To support Atlantic Records's goal to build excitement around the upcoming launch of Portugal. The Man's new album, Aviary collaborated with the band to design a sticker pack that put their distinct creative aesthetic in the hands of their fans. Millions of music-loving mobile photographers created their own "evil friends" - then shared their work on social networks. The results are highly creative, and the engagement very obvious.
Equally important during this test phase is that we've been collaborating with a select set of Aviary partners, who have integrated our SDK into their apps, to ensure that these new native experiences work well for different types of users across our network - from PicStich's creative collagers to Tango's social IMers. The conclusion is: they do.
It's exciting to announce that we’re now moving this program into 'Public Beta'. This means we're opening the opportunity to more brands, and expanding the network of partner apps - while continuing to learn and iterate.
We'll have a lot to share in the coming weeks and months. Ping us if you’re interested in getting involved –partners@aviary.com.
This blog post was adapted from Tobias Peggs’ talk at AdAge Digital on April 16, 2013.