Fuelled by increasing mobile adoption, mobile video ads have grown in prominence across Southeast Asian markets and advertisers in the region are eager to tap into this captive audience.

However, brands currently resort to repurposing creatives developed for TV and using these for mobile, in a bid to maxmise their existing assets. In doing so, they risk pushing content that is irrelevant and missing out on opportunities in the mobile space, cautions Vikas Gulati, Asia managing director at Opera Mediaworks.

In this Q&A with ExchangeWire, Gulati explains how brands can better manage mobile consumer experience and the "reality of a multi-screen world".

ExchangeWire: In terms of expenditure, how much more does it cost (in terms of dollars and production time) to produce a video ad on mobile rather than other formats?

Vikas Gulati: That's an interesting question. Watching a video on mobile is a very different experience from watching a video on TV. Mobile video is very much a 'lean-in' medium, in which consumers actively choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch, and where they watch. TV, on the other hand, is a 'lean-back' medium and a passive experience where consumers have little control.

With this in mind, marketers need to invest in creating dedicated content for mobile. Video ads that are in short form, have quick cuts, and use close-ups garner a higher attention span from mobile users.

The reality is that most advertisers choose to push the default TVCs (TV commercials) on mobile to save on production costs. From our perspective, this doesn't benefit the brand. Our aim is to work with marketers to ensure video content is being created specifically for mobile.

Vikas Gulati

What proportion of an advertiser's budget goes towards mobile videos today?

Mobile video is the fastest growing format and the key driver of growth for the digital advertising ecosystem. Marketers have always loved the idea of telling stories through 30- or 60-second ad spots on TV. With video viewing today rapidly moving to the small screen, where consumers are watching all kinds of content on their smartphones and tablets, it's only natural for advertisers to gravitate where the eyeballs are.

We have seen a massive shift towards the video format in the last 18 months and, today, video ad spend contributes almost 50% of revenues on Opera's platform, whereas it was only 9% in fourth-quarter 2014. That is a fivefold increase in just 12 months. Needless to say, mobile video is the new darling of the digital advertising industry.

What challenges does mobile video pose as a growing format in Southeast Asia?

Brands love the idea of telling compelling stories through the power of sight, sound, and motion. Now that eyeballs have moved to the small screen, they would like to create the same magic that TV has offered.

Some markets do face challenges having to deal with inconsistent infrastructure, network speeds, and bandwidth. However, as tech offerings like our Instant-Play video start to gain ground, we expect mobile video to get a significantly bigger share of digital spend, and to even see TV dollars move to mobile.

You touched on challenges related to inconsistent networks. How should brands resolve this in markets, such as India and Indonesia, where mobile broadband infrastructures are still unstable and feature phones also still popular?

Feature phones still dominate in markets like India and Indonesia, and are not particularly valuable for mobile advertising, due to their limited capacity for rich media and video ad impressions. However, as smartphone adoption in these markets grows (somewhere between 25% and 35% per year) it's only a matter of time before smartphones will be commonplace and huge opportunities to connect with consumers will be available to marketers.

In emerging markets like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, data connection can be spotty, slow, and for many consumers, prohibitively expensive. This is where technology platforms that can deliver great user experiences, and that give 100% HD-quality video with a TV-like experience, irrespective of network infrastructure, are so important. Offerings, such as Opera Mediaworks' Sponsored Web Pass, which reward users with free data, also are relevant in this region where data plans are expensive.

Why do you believe India is the only country that can successfully monetise feature phone users?

The country's mobile ecosystem continues to be highly fragmented, despite India being one of the fastest smartphone markets and Android being the dominant smartphone OS. Over 70% of the country's mobile population, specifically those in smaller towns and rural areas, is feature-phone dominant. The scale of the user base makes it monetisable.

Many companies also are offering dedicated mobile content and services like news, music, video, and other subscription-based services dedicated to feature phones. Add to that the fact that many parts of India are still 'media dark' and mobile phones are the only connecting link. Mobile then becomes a critical channel for brand marketers to connect and engage users.

Opera has identified six Asia-Pacific countries (India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines) as 'power markets' for mobile advertising. Can you explain developments in Southeast Asia that drove the growth for these markets?

There are several factors that fuelled Southeast Asia to become the growth engine for mobile marketing within Asia-Pacific. For one, smartphone penetration across the region has already reached critical mass and content consumption is moving to mobile devices. Mobile internet is becoming the primary driver of internet growth in the region.

The Asean region, collectively, also is a big market and offers an attractive value proposition for multinational companies looking for international expansion out of China and India. And there has been an emergence of mobile-first companies, ecommerce, deals, classifieds, and gaming companies, along with other apps-services companies, that are using mobile as the primary device to offer their product and services.

In addition, the publisher and developer community is now finally building out the local content ecosystem. So, today, we have high-quality local or regional news, entertainment, gaming, and video content for consumers. Naturally, advertising dollars will follow consumers' interest and behavior.

And, with highly fragmented mobile markets, such as India, Japan, and China, where there are numerous mobile devices and platforms, what do brands need to consider in their mobile video ad strategy?

The challenge is not as much platform and devices, since there is very little difference in terms of capabilities. As consumers move across screens, such as TV, laptop, and mobile, how we manage the consumer experience and engage them in a relevant way is the big question. Brands need to consider the reality of the multi-screen world and plan their communications to align with the consumer journey.

The other important piece of the puzzle is the messaging or the content. The days of force-fitting and adapting TV, print, or standard online creative to mobile no longer works. The real estate on mobile is small and we need to design and custom create the right content that delivers on user experience.

Our recent comScore and Native Video Fund study determined that purpose-built, native video ads performed better. This shows that consumers are willing to engage with ads that are entertaining and relevant to them.

To attain better performance on mobile video campaigns, there are three elements that brands need to consider: customer targeting, enhancing user experience, and driving engagement.

Mobile video ads are prominent in Southeast Asian markets, such as Indonesia and Thailand, where the TV market is big. However, as mobile video gains ground, the natural tendency for brands is to maximise existing assets. What we see happening is that most clients would repurpose their creatives meant for TV and use it on mobile. In the process they tend to miss the mark when it comes to user behaviour and how they consume content on the small screen. Mobile is a lean-in media and users will very quickly skip what they find uninteresting as users have more control about their viewing.

What are advertisers in Asia-Pacific still overlooking with regards to their mobile ad strategy?

Data-driven marketing, developing mobile-first creatives, and accountability. Consumers are creating thousands of data signals while using their mobile devices, such as the type of content consumed, when they consume it, and where they consume, giving us the ability to identify the right consumers and connect with them at the right time. Marketers need to be able to understand and use data to drive better performance.

Performance is also dependent on developing mobile-first creatives. As I previously mentioned, we've seen advertisers push their TV ads into smaller screens and miss the opportunity to engage mobile users. Producing rich and engaging experiences for mobile requires new skillsets.

We also need to start looking beyond the standard ad-buying metrics of impressions, clicks, and so on. Advertisers need to start measuring the impact of mobile on brand health and business metrics in order to fully leverage the power of mobile. We have seen mobile-first clients in markets such as gaming, ecommerce, deals, classified, and other online-to-offline service segments leveraging mobile far more effectively, given the focus on business metrics.

Linked to accountability is also the concept of viewability, which I believe will become the buzzword for brands in 2016. At present, ad viewability is only available for desktop inventory and there is no industry standard for mobile. This makes it hard for advertisers to put in place benchmarks that truly deliver on brand and business results.