Brief:

• Mobile ad company PadSquad introduced Squad Stories to bring the story format popularized by Instagram and Snapchat to the wider mobile web, according to a press release shared with Mobile Marketer.
• Clorox's Brita brand and Ben & Jerry's have seen engagement rates rise by 400% above industry benchmarks, with 10 times the average time spent with the creative by using the Squad Stories ad format, according to PadSquad. Video, motion or augmented reality (AR) features help to immerse audiences in the brand's creative experience.
• Squad Stories, like the full suite of PadSquad's mobile ad formats, complies with standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads. Intel, Verizon, The Home Depot, L'Oréal, PepsiCo and Best Buy are among the companies that have partnered with PadSquad.

Insight:

While Snapchat pioneered the Stories format, which lets mobile users share multiple images and videos in one post, these story formats are limited to just one app and each platform's audience, limiting reach. PadSquad is experimenting with storytelling in a mobile, media-rich format that audiences are already familiar with. Extending Stories outside the app setting and onto the mobile web appears to be the natural next step for the format, letting advertisers and brands like Brita and Ben & Jerry's reach broader audiences with richer content.​

While mobile apps are highly engaging, marketers shouldn't ignore the mobile web, researcher eMarketer recommended this week. The mobile web drew more than double the number of unique visitors in June 2017, per comScore data, even as users spent significantly more time in-app than on the mobile web. Google, which depends on web traffic for revenue, is working to develop a standard for mobile ads that would make mobile ads that load quicker.

PadSquad last year developed a campaign for shoe retailer DSW that let mobile users choose among three possible endings to a video ad. The campaign generated about 11,000 hours of video playtime during its two-month run, PadSquad told Mobile Marketer. The company also created a "Spring Trends Lookbook" unit for DSW that let consumers flip through images of different shoe designs by tilting a mobile device to the left.