screensaver campaigns
The handset Screensaver provides a full-screen canvas on which rich billboard-style advertisements can be rendered.
Subscribers in trials of the PACE client in both Europe and Australia consistently agree that the screensaver is their preferred location for receiving mobile advertisements.
the screensaver
Subscribers prefer to receive mobile advertisements via their handset screensaver for the simple reason that campaigns can take advantage of the full-screen without any usability impact on the handset or the end user.
Screensaver ads can be made rich and entertaining, including using industry standards like Flash® for animation and, as a result, subscriber recall rates are very high.
[Users preferred the] ads that are displayed during screen saver mode. They are not intrusive... isi Marketing Research GmbH & Co.KG
In a UK trial of PACE, subscribers stated that their perfect information service included a mix of weather, news, sport, coupon services and real time contextual location-based information such as traffic news. Given these services, users stated that they would be willing to accept mobile advertising in the content-mix.
Overwhelmingly, they rated the screensaver as their preferred location on the handset for advertisements for the simple reason that this was viewed as the least-intrusive option.high recall rates
Prompted recall rates for PACE advertising campaigns was 87% a week after the conclusion of a system trial in Australia that included a mix of content types including advertising.
Overall prompted recall of all message types was high, indicating strength in the medium for advertising and communication Jones Donald Strategy Partners
These high recall rates are, at first glance, counter-intuitive. The screensaver only activates when the handset is idle. Therefore, one would assume that the user does not see the campaigns because the handset would be in a pocket or bag.
This dichotomy is easily resolved with reference to usage statistics from trial participants: A typical user interacts with their handset once every 24 minutes in a 16 hour day.
After each handset activation, the PACE screensaver is activated and remains active for two minutes. Thus, campaigns are displayed for 80 minutes a day giving 160 campaign impressions, each of which is of 30 seconds duration.
Prompted recall of Phidget messages [was] 87% for advertising [campaigns]. Jones Donald Strategy Partners
Even allowing for 'pocket time' and assuming an ad-to content mix of no more than 25%, the sheer number of campaign impressions created during normal handset usage explains the high observed campaign recall rates.
Flash® advertisements
One of the key benefits of PACE is that existing ad-inventories in the SWF format can be packaged and displayed on the Screensaver without compromising the handset battery life.
There is evidence from PACE trials that users are more likely to click-through on rich animated campaigns as compared to campaigns that used static images.
screensaver campaign cross-linkage and click-throughs
Users cannot interact directly with campaigns on the handset Screensaver. For this reason, all campaigns are cross-linked and synchronised with the handset Home Screen where the user can interact with the advertisement and perform any of the rich set of actions supported by the client.
As an adjunct to the Home Screen, advertising links can also be placed onto the lock screen using an Overlay view. Unlike the screensaver, users can interact with these views providing the ability to click-through without manually unlocking the handset.
availability
Support for screensaver campaigns is limited to the PACE client for Series 60 handsets. We do not currently support this feature on the PACE client for Android handsets.
benefits
Trials show that the Screensaver is subscriber's preferred choice for the display of advertisements on the handset. The PACE client delivers excellent impression counts which, in turn, deliver strong click-through rates through home-screen linkages.