Breaking News Rolls Out Mobile Ad Unit

Mobile advertising remains in flux. The jury is out on what form factor will win out.

Real-time news alert service Breaking News has an interesting experiment with units that are, in effect, sponsored content. GE is running innovation-themed content ads within the Breaking News app that link to GEReports.com. They’re shown based on stories appearing related to business, tech or health. OMD worked on the media buy.

Breaking Ads

Up until now, Breaking News ran display ads in its mobile products. However, over the last year, it has focused its attention on growing its mobile audience. According to Cory Bergman, gm of Breaking News, the service now sees five times more traffic on mobile than desktop. Comscore puts 312,000 uniques to Breaking News’ desktop and 186,000 uniques to its mobile site for March 2013.

Many are turning to advertorial-type content as a viable model for mobile, where screen sizes are limited. Twitter’s seeing success with promoted tweets in mobile, and Buzzfeed is reporting the same with its advertising content placements.

Image via Shutterstock 

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