Dive Brief:

• Stoli’s newest mobile ad campaign adds another sensory input, touch in the form of a vibrating phone.
• Touch technology is known as “haptics” and the ability to include it in mobile ads helps illustrate how much more intimate the mobile experience can be for ad viewers.
• Stoli is the first brand to include haptics in an Opera Mediaworks mobile ad network campaign.

Dive Insight:

One of the benefits of mobile advertising is that it’s more intimate than other marketing channels, and through technology, like haptics, it allows ads to appeal to the sense of touch as well as presenting audio and visual elements. Stoli, the vodka brand, is using haptics to make ad viewers’ phones vibrate in conjunction with certain ad elements such as the shaking of a cocktail.

"We're always looking for new and unique ways to interact and connect with our millennial consumer," Russ Pareti, brand director at Stoli Vodka, told Adweek. "We felt like this technology fit really well with our digital short campaign."

For now the jury is out on how mobile users will react to haptic elements in mobile ads. It’s believed the more senses that are engaged, the more powerful the ad, but at the same time there is risk that viewers might be turned off by the added, unexpected vibration element.