Media bridging – the next big thing in mobile marketing?
Technology and marketing. It’s a match made in capitalism heaven. Science gives us new ways to interact with and reach our audience and we in turn develop unthought-of ways for its application.
Enter media bridging.
Without getting too “techy,” media bridging uses WebSocket's API to establish a communication channel between a desktop computer and an HTML5 mobile site. De-jargonized, this means it allows you to control your desktop with your mobile. Sound familiar? You’ve probably played Google’s ‘World Wide Maze’, a Cannes Mobile Lions Silver winner. The tech giant’s advertising platform DoubleClick has been experimenting for over a year, developing it’s own media bridging technology they call Channel Connect. Their successes have only added to Google’s identity as innovators and forward thinkers (both in advertising and technology), but what about the marketing implications?
At the moment, media bridging’s applications are only just beginning to be realised, so campaigns utilising the technology are few and far between. However, the metrics coming back are outstanding from a branding perspective, reaching upwards of 12 per cent interaction rate. One champion of media bridging, the creative agency Spinnaker, has seen a .33 per cent click through rate - far exceeding the YouTube benchmark of 0.1 per cent - plus a 15.98 per cent interaction rate, 11 times higher than YouTube's benchmark.
Much like augmented reality, the fad possibilities of this technology are obvious. Yet, if used wisely it is yet another effective tool in the mobile marketers toolkit.
Here are three fantastic uses of media bridging: