Ad tech firm TabMo has partnered with Playground XYZ, a specialist rich media platform and marketplace for unique advertising formats on mobile, to expand the creative options available to advertisers and agencies using its mobile creative demand side platform (DSP) Hawk.

Playground XYZ’s formats enable advertisers to increase brand awareness and improve critical ad performance measures, such as viewability, time-in-view, engagement rate, and video completion rate. All of its ad formats are Coalition for Better Ads-compliant and run across invite-only private marketplaces made up of leading publishers.

“Smartphones offer unprecedented opportunities for brands to engage with consumers; they are highly personal and almost constantly in use,” said Chris Childs, UK managing director at TabMo. “As an industry we haven’t made the most of this and mobile ads are all too often unmemorable or annoying – or both.  TabMo has focused on mobile and creativity from day one; partnering with Playground XYZ which has the same ethos is one more step in our mission to make Hawk a gateway to the best of the best in mobile – premium placements, accurate and scaleable audience data, and innovative and engaging creative formats.”

The partnership enables TabMo to provide an additional suite of ad formats to its clients, while expanding the number of publishers and range of inventory available to them.

The pair aim to tackle the industry issue that mobile advertising has not yet reached its potential.  The State of the Industry: Mobile marketing in EMEA 2018 published by Warc found that 54 per cent of client-side marketers do not have a formal mobile marketing strategy for their brand, while 61 per cent only find mobile ‘quite’ effective as a marketing channel.  Eight per cent see it as ‘quite ineffective’ or ‘ineffective’ (compared to five per cent in 2017.)

“Brands and agencies are very advanced in the way they think about strategy, data, targeting and even messaging on mobile,” said Ben Dimond, head of EMEA at Playground XYZ. “We’re here to make sure all that great work doesn’t fall short at the ‘final mile’ – the actual ad that users see. By creating eye catching and attention-grabbing formats we help advertisers supercharge their spend; working with TabMo allows these clients to scale this proposition across its Hawk platform.”