As we know it today, the power of mobile ad serving has become increasingly popular, and even more so, it beats the web browsing most of us are familiar with. This leaves us to wonder what the best mobile ad formats are that bring results.
In January 2024, there were 5.35 billion internet users, accounting for 66.2% of the world’s total population, of which approximately 4.88 billion are mobile users. According to Statista, in the US, $400 billion will be spent on mobile advertising in 2024, a 17.2% increase from the previous year. By 2028, the Search Advertising Mobile sector will account for $251.1 billion of total ad spending.
Furthermore, since an internet user spends an average of 4.37 hours per day using mobile apps, we are now left to wonder: what are the best mobile ad formats that drive revenue? It’s not that simple or complex; it’s more about finding the proper mobile ad formats that reach the right audience at the right time, converting them, and increasing your monthly ROI.
Luckily for you, this is what we are discussing today, helping you choose the best ad formats for your campaigns that align with your brand book.
Table of contents
Mobile Ad Formats and Types at a Glance
- Banner Ads: 320 x 50 px, 320 x 100 px, 300 x 250 px, 468 x 60 px, 728 x 90 px, 320 x 480 px, 768 x 1024 px, 300 x 600 px;
- Interstitial Ads: 320 x 480 px, 1024 x 768 px;
- Rich Media Ads: 320 x 480 px, 300 x 250 px, 300 x 50 px;
- Native Ads: 1200 x 627 px, 600 x 600 px, 320 x 480 px, 300 x 400 px;
- Video Ads: 320 x 180 px;
Indeed, many mobile ad formats repeat themselves in multiple ad types. However, you must examine each ad type and learn more about best practices to harness them in your favor.
Best Mobile Ad Formats and Ad Types
As we’ve discovered some of the most common and most used mobile ad formats and sizes, it’s time to examine each ad format and size specification, what it is, when it is used, and how to use it to your advantage.
From app monetization to mobile access to the website, mobile ad formats are everywhere and at all times. However, it depends on how the ads are created, whether they interrupt a user’s flow, cause frustration, or seamlessly blend within the content, as seen with native ads.
But let’s enter the subject in greater detail!
Mobile Banner Ads
For all advertisers, there are many mobile banner ad formats and sizes, and due to its increased flexibility, many brands are using these types to promote their offerings. Regardless of their niche, these vary from service providers, products, social media, and more.
Mobile banner ad sizes vary depending on the device, such as a smartphone or tablet. They could also be 320 x 50 pixels, 320 x 100 pixels, 300 x 250 pixels, 468 x 60 pixels, or 728 x 90 pixels.
However, the most popular mobile banner sizes are 320 × 50 pixels and 300 x 250 pixels.
320 x 50 Pixels: Mobile Leaderboard
The 320 × 50 pixels mobile ad format, also known as the leaderboard ad, is most used due to its low advertising price, whereas publishers harness it for brand awareness.
This ad format is non-intrusive to a user’s experience, as it doesn’t interrupt the user’s flow. As such, it became the standard banner size used by most developers.
Furthermore, the 320 × 50 pixels mobile ad format can be seen either at the top or bottom of the app, and it is most used in mobile gaming.
300 x 250 Pixels: Inline Rectangle
The 300 x 250-pixel medium rectangular banner is the second most used ad format. Unlike the precedent model at the top or bottom, this format is usually found in the middle of content and can be static or interstitial.
Since it is larger, the advertiser could include more information about its offerings or be more creative and play with the negative space. Yet, it comes down to the brand’s guidebook, concept, needs, and creative designer to carve out a high-converting banner.
For popular SSPs like Sevio Ad Manager, this is the most used mobile ad format besides other IAB ad sizes, due to its performance and lightweight ad unit, which doesn’t affect the website’s loading speed.
320 x 100 Pixels: Large Mobile Banner
Another mobile banner size is the large banner, which is 320 x 100 pixels. It is slightly larger in height and is most often used for animated banners, as it has a remarkable ad viewability rate and performs well on mobile devices.
Other Banner Mobile Ad Formats:
- 320 x 480 pixels – mobile interstitial ads;
- 728 x 90 pixels – leaderboard;
- 768 x 1024 pixels – portrait interstitial ads;
- 300 x 600 pixels – half-page;
Finally, smart banners can detect a device’s width and orientation to deliver the ad in the appropriate size. Usually, the smart banners work through a link, redirecting the user to its operating system app store, iOS, or Android, hoping to download the advertiser’s application.
Furthermore, using smart banners aids users’ experience and targets web users to drive traffic to your business apps.
Mobile Banner Ad Formats Best Practices
Now that you’ve learned about some of the most popular banner ad sizes, let’s discover the latest best practices for harnessing them to your business’s or publishers’ advantage.
- There isn’t a cookie-cutter deal, so it is best to experiment with different banner ad sizes to find the one that converts the most, regardless of your business goals.
- Accidental clicks are a real deal; often, they might bring irrelevant users to your page or even frustrate visitors, leading them to leave the page. As a result, you could have a high CTR with no results or a high bounce rate.
- Many publishers get excited, especially when starting, and place too many ads on their page, leading to users’ frustration or even Google penalization.
It is essential to choose a robust SSP that supports multiple IAB standard ad sizes besides customizing your ad size in many creative modes, such as static, dynamic through HTML5, or even scripts to add functionality or interactivity.
Interstitial Ad Formats on Mobile Devices
Interstitial ads are most seen on mobile devices due to their interactive characteristics and the fact that they cover the entire screen.
Additionally, they integrate banners and videos, and as a common practice, they make up for the natural transitions between other elements of its medium, i.e., in games, after completing a task, app launch or close, and others.
For example, the cookie usage pop-up, the age verification pop-up, and the paywall pop-up are all interstitial ad formats for mobile and desktop.
320 x 480 Pixels: Interstitial Ads
The interstitial ad sizes are 320 x 480 and 480 x 320 pixels for mobile phones and 1024 x 768 and 768 x 1024 pixels for tablets. Moreover, if a user’s device isn’t big enough, the ad will be resized to 320 x 480 or 480 x 320.
Interstitial Ad Formats Best Practices
From user experience to the exit button, understanding the best practices could be the way to go for ensuring beneficial ads and great results.
1. A publisher should prioritize the user experience, especially when placing interstitial ads with programmatic advertising, as they work best on a linear experience.
Therefore, if there’s a task involved, the interstitial ads should be placed before the next button, as placing them after could lead to accidental clicks, lowering the conversion rate.
2. Another essential aspect of the interstitial ad format is the exit button, which is often nowhere to be found or very small. This leads to user frustration, loss of patience, and feeling spammed when closing the session.
Instead, there could be a timeout feature, announcing how many seconds it takes until they could willingly close the ad.
When done correctly, interstitial ad formats could increase publishers’ CPMs, CTRs, and ad revenue.
3. Due to their engaging nature, interstitial ads have a higher viewability rate and are more challenging to ignore. Users could also skip the ad if it is not relevant or exciting.
However, most of the time, due to the creatives, the user chooses to stay until the end, being curious about the offering itself, but again, it is about the creative aspect.
Rich Media Ad Formats
Rich media ads are highly creative and qualitative displays that respond to users’ actions. They can be part of a programmatic ad campaign and integrate images, videos, or audio snippets through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on display ad platforms.
However, this creative burst has a downside, such as being bigger and, thus, slowing pages.
320 x 480 Pixels: Expandable Display Ads
The most common rich media ad size for mobile ad formats is 320 x 480 pixels. This mobile ad format changes depending on users’ actions: when they click on it or hover over it. Therefore, the ad expands or retracts.
Furthermore, these ads could also be rich interstitials 300 x 250 pixels, rich expandable banners 300 x 50 pixels, or rich expandable wide banners 320 x 50 pixels.
Rich Media Ad Formats Best Practices
Overall, rich media ad formats are great due to their interactive nature, yet what’s the fine line between being interactive or intrusive? Let’s find some best practices that could turn rich media ads into a gold pot.
1. Stay within the limit with the animations and the high expectations of interactivity because you could become intrusive. The golden rule could be the Kiss Principle, also known as Keep Is Simple Stupid, or Keep It Short and Simple to alleviate users’ frustration and
2. As with interstitial ads, make the exit button visible enough, especially when the rich media ad formats take up the entire screen.
3. As 82% of the global internet traffic comes from video, it is advisable to consider it in your strategy to boost the ROI.
So, as you can see, rich media ads open new doors to all advertisers, increasing their chances for better engagement and ad performance. Yet, as a publisher looking to maximize its revenue, it could be daunting to do it alone.
Especially since rich media ads can be part of programmatic advertising, Sevio Ad Manager could connect you to advertisers seeking rich media ad placements, thus ensuring competitive bids on your ad inventory.
Mobile Native Ads
As the name already explains, native ads blend in with the content of the medium where they are placed. The critical aspect is that they seem organic and non-intrusive and could appear sponsored or promoted.
Moreover, native ads don’t have a specific ad size. As such, they could vary from 1200 x 627 pixels to 600 x 600 pixels, 320 x 480 pixels, or
300 x 400 pixels, depending on the aspect ratio required by the publisher. Therefore, a native ad can be a headline, banner, video, or thumbnail.
Also, nowadays, many advertising platforms and SSPs, like Sevio, allow publishers to create a native ad with HTML5 and determine their ad formats, from in-feed to sidebars and more. As such, they could boost their revenue through this extensive flexibility.
Mobile Native Ads: Best Practices
As it is crucial to get the most out of your native ads, let’s see the best practices.
- Native ads are best suited for publishers with a constant or growing user base due to their nature.
- For better results, A/B tests native ads in other creative combos, like mobile display ads. Also, remembering different font sizes, backgrounds, layouts, spacings, and more could be the key to unlocking those formats that perform well.
- HTML, JavaScript, and CSS within the Ad Manager allow you to easily manage your native ad styles for different occasions, situations, and mediums to maximize ad performance.
Mobile Video Ads
Video advertising comes in many shapes, sizes, and formats, from mobile to web, desktops, and apps. It is safe to say that mobile video ads could be the future of advertising for years to come, especially since consumer behavior already shows us that listening is far more comfortable than reading or researching.
Moreover, as the IAB Report said, video ad spending is growing nearly 80% faster than other media outlets overall, and this ad revenue is expected to reach $63B in 2024.
Even though mobile video ads offer such potential, some publishers don’t enjoy them as much, given that they can negatively affect page load times and take more than 3 seconds to load, which we all know makes the user bounce off.
However, the most used format is the 320 x 180 pixels, known as the 16:9 ratio, which can be inverted for a 9:16 ratio. The 320 × 480 pixels is the 4:3 legacy aspect ratio for video ads on old mobile phones.
Mobile Video Ads: Best Practices
- Since there are different video ad types, why not harness them in your favor and use the in-stream and out-stream ads?
- As a publisher, optimize your ad inventory according to your advertisers’ needs, such as the quality of your audience and high page views.
- Another crucial factor when dealing with videos is their length. So, be sure the video is relevant to your target audience and under 30 seconds to ensure your visitors are engaged and want more.re.
Now that you’ve learned more about the best mobile ad formats to harness this year let’s move along and see how you, as a publisher, can choose the best mobile ad formats for yourself.
How to Choose the Best Mobile Ad Formats as a Publisher
1. Choose the Right Adtech Platform that Supports Your Needs
This is the first and essential step in choosing the right mobile ad format to ignite growth and maximize publisher revenue.
So, having the right partner, such as a powerful SSP like Sevio, could help you monetize your ad inventory by quickly selling your ad space and delivering the proper mobile ad formats at the right time to the right audience.
Sounds simple, right? Well, that’s because it is!
2. The Metrics of Performance Tracking
Let’s say you’ve figured it out with the right Adtech platform, and the ads are up and running – what do you do from here?
Measuring and tracking KPIs (key performance indicators), such as total traffic, click-through rate, and revenue per customer, could help you improve your mobile app monetization. Therefore, you can A/B test different graphics, texts, fonts, and ad placements to ensure you’re reaching your desired outcome.
3. Test, Test, and Test Again
This third step is tightly related to the second point, and vice versa, as finding the best mobile ad formats involves testing different sizes, placements, graphics, and others and measuring each’s success.
Moreover, it is essential to open yourself and your potential revenue to more than one format that works. To ensure you’re putting all these into motion, let’s talk and see how we can easily maximize your revenue!
Final Thoughts
In today’s data-driven mobile advertising landscape, selecting the right mobile ad formats is crucial for maximizing publisher revenue and user engagement. Various mobile ad formats exist, including banner ads, interstitial ads, rich media ads, native ads, and video ads, so remember that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
Thus, experimenting with different formats, sizes, and placements is critical to discovering what resonates with your audience and drives optimal results.
Our platform supports a wide range of mobile ad formats for publishers seeking to streamline ad management, optimize delivery, and unlock comprehensive insights. So, are you ready to unlock the full potential of your mobile ad inventory?
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