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Interruptive ad model ‘very likely’ to fail on mobile, predicts Huffington Post CEO Jimmy Maymann

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

November 5, 2014 | 3 min read

It is “very likely” that the interruptive ad model on mobile won’t provide the best opportunity for conversion, the chief executive of the Huffington Post Jimmy Maymann has predicted.

Speaking at the Web Summit in Dublin, Maymann vocalised his distaste for banner ads and disruptive advertising on mobile and said that neither will be the future of monetisation on mobile in their current formats and called for a change.

“I’m not saying that the banner can’t work in mobile I’m just saying that from my perspective it’s not a great experience right now, and that’s also what I see with our audience they don’t enjoy it. At the end of the day I’m in a business where I’m trying to build an audience and obviously if I can keep my audience over time I will be able to monetise it and have a very viable and successful business.

“I don’t want to throw banner ads in front of them if I know it’s going to annoy them and if we see it as something that is hindering why they’re coming to the mobile site, which is to consume content. So to my point I actually think we will find some formats that will work but I don’t think we’ve found it yet.”

He continued to push the point that the interruptive ad model is a “huge” problem for the publishing industry and warned that content producers need to assess the best model for monetising mobile advertising.

“It’s very likely it won’t work, which is again why I say as an industry it puts a huge challenge in front of us and we need to think very carefully…The money should flow into mobile very fast now because if you’re not investing where eyeballs are you really not doing a great job as a brand advertiser. But at the same time honestly I don’t think we have the right solutions to see that in flow right now.”

On programmatic Maymann revealed that he is seeing an increasing demand as brands want to extend their reach to the ever growing mobile audience, and said that programmatic will actually help the Huffington Post to “not focus” on the problem of banner ads and to instead focus on native solutions and brand videos.

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