TubeMogul head of mobile product Antoine Barbier was over in London to speak at last week’s MMA Forum. While he was in town, M&M Global caught up with him to discuss the future of cross screen.

Barbier made a small presentation at the MMA event around mobile consumption and the importance to marketers of investing in the medium as the second biggest after television. His panel featured experts from Channel 4, Starcom and Huawei, discussing what is working well in mobile advertising and what is still causing challenges.

An issue highlighted was creative length. “When you want to do mobile video advertising, you can’t take your 30 second or one minute TV commercial and put it on the mobile format, that’s not going to work,” says Barbier, stressing the importance of brands investing in the creative side to repurpose adverts for the mobile screen.

He also discusses the ad tech players which he feels are still “walled gardens”: “As an advertiser, as a brand, it feels hard to get data in and out from there and being able to make the best of what’s out there working with multiple partners.”

Mobile and TV

Looking to the future of cross screen, Barbier feels that mobile and TV are going to live alongside each other for some time still.

“TV’s still a very strong medium and as a brand you need to invest there,” he says. “What you want to look for is how you compliment or how you make sure your TV buys are well fitted with you digital buys, mobile being a big component of it.”

There’s still a lot of things to do in regards to understanding how audiences can be reached cross screen whilst meeting targets. Barbier feels that working with Nielsen in the US has helped understand what people are consuming on TV and on digital, whilst extending and increasing reach by complimenting TV buys, but is looking for an equivalent in the UK market.

“We have a good idea of what we want to do, now it’s a question of finding the right partners to help us achieve that,” he adds. “Obviously you want to make the best of it and compliment your buys across these screens but there’s a clear time for each of these mediums, and when you talk about mobile its likely going to be on your way to work, at your lunchtime, on your way back to your home.”

At these “right times”, Barbier feels it comes back to having a “short, appealing, engaging type of creative” if you’re going to reach consumers “on their couch on their tablets at night while they watch TV”.

However, he stresses there is more that can be done to better sequence messaging at the right time, making the space exciting. “There’s so much we can do still and learn from the behaviours of the users and do the right thing to advertise in front of them,” he adds.

Bubble bursting?

In Rome at Festival of Media Global 2016, The Economist Group president Paul Rossi said he felt the digital tech bubble was about to burst. Barbier retaliates that, although it’s no secret that the landscape is changing very quickly, the agency world is already starting to take heed.

“Personally, that’s what I like with working at TubeMogul – where we are really part of shaking the industry and trying to make sure that, at the end of the day, we bring back the right value to the advertisers.

“Again, I think there is likely a place for the agencies in that world but this model needs to evolve. We’ll see where it lands, it’s going to take some time I’m sure.”