Meet the Lumia 925, the latest smartphone flagship in Nokia’s increasingly populous Windows Phone portfolio. The 925 is clearly Nokia’s answer to criticisms of its high end devices being too heavy.  At the device’s London launch earlier today, Vodafone’s Patrick Chomet – brought onstage to talk up the new Lumia which the carrier will be ranging in Europe — couldn’t avoid commenting negatively on the Lumia 920’s weight. For all the noise about the 925’s camera, its less hefty hardware is the key design difference here.

The 925 drops a full 46g compared to the earlier Lumia 920, weighing in at 139g vs the 920’s hefty 185g. The phone feels pleasingly light in the hand, helped by its slender profile: it’s just 8.5mm thick at its thickest point (vs 10.7mm for the 920). In order to achieve a sleeker, lighter device, yet keep the 4.5-inch display, Nokia has dropped built-in wireless charging – but it’s not ditching the tech entirely. It has included wireless charging as an add-on via clip-on shells – likely sold separately — which increase the thickness of the 925 by a few millimetres but don’t appear to add too much weight back on.

It’s a compromise but one that results in a sleeker, more attractive handset out of the box. If it’s a choice between wireless charging – which remains something of a gimmick — or a lightweight phone, most people would opt for the latter. And that’s a calculation Nokia has clearly made with the 925.

The handset design also takes a few steps in a new direction for the Lumia range, with aluminium edging running around its four sides – a band which doubles as the phone’s antenna – coupled with a polycarbonate back. The two-tone look and feel is a definite departure for Nokia’s high end phone design. Colour options are also more subtle, with the black version having anodized, almost charcoal looking aluminium edging, while the white 925 has silver edges. There’s also a grey colourway. The trademark bright Lumia colours are reserved for the wireless charging shells — including red, yellow and cyan.

The PureView-branded 8.7MP camera on the 925 is the other big focus here. The hardware introduces a sixth lens to the device, which Nokia says improves performance in bright sunlight. This is in addition to strong low-light capabilities, which it has touted on its other Lumia flagships – including most recently the Lumia 928.

During the 925 launch Nokia demoed both the low and bright-light photography capabilities of the phone, inviting the press to compare the shots with photos taken on their own smartphones. The Lumia 925 came off as better at snapping in the dark than iPhones, the BlackBerry Z10, the HTC One and even the Lumia 920, pulling a brighter, more colourful image from out of the gloom. It also appeared to capture more detail in strong light conditions in Nokia’s test conditions.

As well as the extra hardware lens, the 925 includes a new suite of camera-editing software called Nokia Smart Camera. This makes use of a burst mode that takes 10 photos at around 5MP each. It then offers a series of image-manipulation options to enhance the photo. Some of these features were a little hit and miss under the press launch lighting conditions. Others looked a little gimmicky, such as the ability to composite a series of movements into one shot. But others seemed like they could be genuinely useful, such as a feature that allows you to create the best shot by choosing from various facial expressions — much like the timeshift feature on the BlackBerry Z10/Q10. Or another that lets you remove a moving object from an image, such as a person or car passing in front of the scene you’re trying to shoot.

The Smart Camera software won’t be exclusive to the Lumia 925 for long – Nokia said it will be pushed out to other Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices as an update in Q3. But for the moment, the Lumia 925 has the lion’s share of Nokia’s camera creativity, including some new features in its Creative Studio image editing app, such as a tilt shift and radial focus. And the Oggl app.

One more new software addition in the 925′s screen settings allows users to tweak the colour saturation and temperature of the AMOLED screen to dial down how poppingly bright the colours are and opt for more muted, photo-realistic tones if you desire. Elsewhere, this is a business-as-usual Windows Phone 8 device loaded with the usual suite of Microsoft and Nokia apps, which include its HERE mapping and location apps and Nokia Music. It is also skinned with the new more flexible Windows Phone homescreen that allows for three different-sized live tiles.

The 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip powering the Lumia 925 doesn’t sound that beefy, considering the proliferation of quad-core phones in the Android ecosystem at least, but it’s as top-of-the range as Windows Phone gets right now. And Nokia argues that no more processing clout is required to do all of the image processing going on under the 925′s hood.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The idea of using Augmented Reality to bring dead-tree media to life is arguably very 2010, and back then it often hugged the line of gimmickry. But with the hype being generated by Google Glass, AR technology seems destined to be brought back into focus. Meanwhile, companies like Layer and Metaio have built platforms to help brands create experiences that bring real-world objects to life, not least print campaigns, by overlaying digital content via the view finder of a smartphone.

Today UK startup VirtualMob is officially launching its own Augmented Reality self-service — Point-at-Me (PAM) — which mixes drag ‘n’ drop content creation, e-commerce, and analytics in a bid to make it even easier for companies to get in on the AR action.

Running in private Beta over the last month, PAM aims to lower the barriers for brands who want to build Augmented Reality-enabled mobile apps and campaigns. It combines a CMS platform to let them create AR experiences without the need to code, which can then be accessed by consumers through the accompanying PAM smartphone app or by being integrated into the brand’s own app. In that sense, one way to think of VirtualMob’s proposition might be a WordPress for AR — and certainly this is about democratising access to the technology for content creators through ease-of-use and reduced cost.

The PAM platform itself — which while in Beta has already been used by over 100 customers including The Trump Ocean Club Panama, Cartier, Victoria’s Secret, Time Inc., The Waldorf Astoria, Cartier, Hyundai, and Unilever — is designed to be self-service, requiring little to no technical knowledge by employing a drag ‘n’ drop UI. It’s particularly suited to bringing a print campaign (or other real-world static content) to life by augmenting it with digital content, such as images, video, links and, crucially, e-commerce functionality.

So, for example, you might see an advert for a watch in a dead-tree magazine prompting you to fire up the PAM app (or the brand’s own app with PAM integrated) and point your phone at the image. From here you’d see see additional information like where to buy, features, cost etc., along with any relevant call to actions.

But what makes this especially useful for brands employing the technology is that all of these interactions are measurable, and indeed PAM comes with analytics. This includes things like click through rate, location/time, and source media, thus bringing a degree of accountability to print campaigns that isn’t normally possible, helping brands prioritise their marketing budgets.

“Brands love the analytics part, as they spend millions on printed media, but have difficulties turning that into something they can measure or convert into hits via print,” says VirtualMob co-founder Chaya Jadhav.

Founded in 2011, the company is self-funded to the tune of $500,000 and is in the process of raising an external round of funding. To that end, I’m also told that the PAM platform will be compatible with Google Glass.

Well, there’s a surprise.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column looks at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.

These days, it seems that anything that whiffs of the traditional PC has all the market appeal of a month-old banana. Microsoft and its hardware cohorts are trying to fight back against the image of the staid tower and notebook with touch-enabled, all-in-one computers, clickety-covered tablets and convertible notebooks that twist like a contortionist. With no stake in Windows to protect, though, device crowdfunders have taken a different tack, pushing Android and other mobile OSes into alien configurations. While a bit of old hat for tiny game consoles from OUYA and GameStick, the game is now on for more general computing tasks.

Backed: MiiPC ZeroDesktop is a more established business than your typical solo entrepreneur sailing off into crowdfunding waters. But its experience with cloud services, as well as remote access lend differentiation to MiiPC, an overgrown milk pint of an Android computer that features extensive controls for the pre-tween to tween in your household and a green under-light for no good reason except it looks kind of cool. MiiPC will feature a companion app that lets ever-watchful parents and guardians control access to apps like a boss regardless of the theme-song message of Malcolm in the Middle.

The MiiPC project wrapped up this week more than tripling its $50,000 goal for the mini-desktop that backers could scoop up for $99. As the device uses a similar chipset to the one in present-day Google TV boxes, the company is going to turn its interns onto it this summer to see what kind of alternative uses can be found for a small, albeit plug-tethered, Android device.

Whacked: Aurus Dual-Screen Tablet PC. What madness is this? A mobile device with not one but two displays? The unthinkable has been thought of with Windows PCs by Toshiba and Acer and an Android device by Sony. All failed in part because the underlying operating systems are not optimized for doing things like, say, putting a keyboard or game controls on one screen with the display of an email client or game on the other. The campaign page acknowledges the issue, asking, “Need some dual screen apps?,” assuring backers that they are developing some. Sony, for its part, said it was working with third-party developers. But, again, good luck with that without Google throwing its full weight behind multi-screen devices.

Backers could have nabbed the double-barrell Android tablet starting at €399, but it passed few consumers’ screenings. The project racked up little more than 1 percent of its lofty €200,000 goal.

Backed: CoolShip. It wasn’t quite the level of integration we see in today’s all-in-one computers like the iMac, but some of the earliest PCs had no separate tower enclosure, integrating the processor and memory into the same casing as the keyboard. Perhaps the slickest examples of these early designs were from Commodore, which used them in the rotund and popular Commodore 64 and VIC-20. Indeed, that brand and its tell-tale industrial design has been trotted out for pricey Windows-ready x86 PCs designed into cases appealing to the nostalgic.

The Android-touting CoolShip, on the other hand, is not only cheap at $99, but even upgradeable so you can swap in new, more powerful processors as they become available. The flexibility should also help address another issue with computers integrated into keyboards: death by spilled beverage. CoolShip sailed by its campaign goal of $10,000, nearly doubling that amount, and is expected to start shipping to backers this month.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Whether or not you think that Google Glass is something that you’d wind up using one day, you have to admit that the technology is impressive. Packed inside of the pair of specs is a computer running android, camera and all of the wireless capabilities you’d need. The idea of wearable computers is nothing new, and a team that explored Antarctica actually had their own pair of “Glass” long before it was en vogue.

In a blog post chronicling the team’s experience, Tina Sjogren fondly remembers what it was like to pull together a wearable computer running Windows 98, paired with a “finger” mouse for controls and a glass screen as its display. It sounds a lot like an early version of Google Glass, but this was truly a technological marvel, considering that it was built and used at the South Pole in 2001.

The specs of the device, which was called “South Pole Wearable,” are nothing short of amazing, including custom built software to share information and post photos. It was also solar powered, something that Google Glass could really use. It didn’t use 3G, 4G or WiFi, relying on satellites:

Finger Mouse
Wrist Keyboard
HUD (VGA Heads Up Display, Eye-trek Glasses by Olympus)
Wearable Windows 98 computers
Daylight flat panel display
Customized Technology vests
Shoulder Mounted Web Camera
Bluetooth near person network
Iridium data over satellite
Power converters
Solar cells
Control and Command voice software
CONTACT blogging software
Image editing, word processing

The entire kit weighed 15 pounds, which is almost double what the original Google Glass prototype weighed, about 8 pounds. It now weighs about as much as an average pair of sunglasses.

Tina and Tom Sjogren set forth to build something that allowed them to transfer all types of information as they skied through the snowy South Pole. Sharing this type of information in real-time was not something that many could wrap their brains around, therefore the pair didn’t get the type of attention for their device that Google is getting for Glass today. Tina says:

We wore a computer on our hips, a mouse in our pocket, and the glass was our screen. We did it not to show off but because we had no other choice.

She also sees a future for Google Glass and regular consumers: “New technology often needs time to catch on and I can see a future for Google glass today. It will come down to how sleek and useful they are. A stylish design paired with all the wonders of augmented reality – what’s not to love?”

“Cool, maybe the time has come for this tech”

Wearing Google Glass wasn’t the experience that Tina and Tom had back in 2001, as Tina refers to their display as “too bulky to wear all of the time.” The eye piece on their device had greenish text which, much like Google Glass, didn’t obstruct your view. It even had voice commands. The two even slept in their gear at nights, to keep it warm and protect it from the elements. In 2002, they became the first to broadcast live photos and sounds from the Antarctic ice cap.

The trekkers counted on Ericcson as their sponsor during the mission, and here’s a drawing they made of a “future explorer” wearing their device:

I spoke with Tina Sjogren today and she told me that the reason for building the device was based on their love of exploration: “Our specialty is to find and marry software and hardware for unique situations such as extreme expeditions, military, security and other.” The purpose of building the device was simple, yet profound: “We had a story to tell. There had never been live dispatches done from a skiing expedition on the continent before. We also helped General Dynamics with feedback on how this could work on aircraft carriers.”

Twelve years after the Sjogren team set out on their adventure, Google is trying to make the world around us equally as interesting with Glass. It’s too soon to know whether it will catch on with consumers once they’re made available to people other than developers.

If we’ve learned anything from Tina and Tom Sjogren, it’s that good ideas have this way of coming back year after year, getting better and more polished each time:

As Google Glass has gotten more publicity, Tina summarized her feelings about it succinctly, capturing the true mentality of someone who loves to see new things, explore new places and share experiences: “Cool, maybe the time has come for this tech.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Codoon is one of the first wearable tech gadgets produced by a Chinese company. It’s also an almost exact copy of the Jawbone UP. Sina Tech reports Chinese consumers will be able to get a Codoon on their wrists by the beginning of June.

Like the Jawbone UP, the Codoon (on the right in the image) is meant to be worn 24/7 as it monitors the wearers’ activity and sleeping patterns. Furthermore, the Codoon’s similarity to the UP doesn’t just end at its wraparound design, zig-zag texture, glowing blue crescent moon icon, cap and headphone jack sync. As For Techies Only noted in March, Codoon’s Web site and app also bear a striking similarity to the Jawbone UP’s, with near identical UIs and feature sets.

Though the Jawbone UP has been available in China since the end of last month, its retail price of 1,100 yuan (about $180) is more than three times as expensive as the Codoon, which will sell for just 299 yuan (about $49). Though wearable tech has yet to gain traction in China, the low price point might be enough to tempt customers to at least try out the Codoon wristband.

Before it went “Single White Female” on Jawbone UP, Codoon was a fledgling suite of apps developed by startup LeDong, the first Chinese company to offer a fitness tracking apps. Codoon received over $1 million in funding from Chinese online gaming company Shanda in 2011.

We’ve emailed Codoon and Jawbone for comment.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

At its MAX conference in Los Angeles today, Adobe showed  quite a few products that will soon be available to its customers, but it also highlighted a number of hardware experiments, including Project Context, a totally re-imagined way for creating magazine layouts, as well as an advanced stylus and a ruler for touchscreens.

After the keynote this morning, I had a chance to sit back with Adobe’s David Macy to talk about both the newly announced Mighty pen and Napoleon ruler for touchscreens, as well as Project Context. All of these projects are definitely more than just hobbies for Adobe, something Macy acknowledged when I asked him about the company’s plans for these tools.

While Macy obviously wouldn’t talk about when (or even if) Adobe plans to turn these prototypes into products, my feeling was that the company is clearly thinking about it. It’s also clear that the Adobe XD team, which is behind all of these projects, has the backing to explore these ideas. The idea for the Mighty Pen, for example, was born about a year and a half ago and the team has been iterating on the idea ever since.

Out of the three projects, Project Context is clearly the one that is the most “out there” right now. It’s easy to imagine Adobe selling pens and rulers, but when it comes to giant touchscreens, that’s not exactly the company’s core focus. Right now Context is focused solely on magazine design, but because it runs on OS X (and actually uses two Macs for each screen), the system could be adapted for other uses as well (and Macy wouldn’t say if Wired or Conde Nast have any plans to use it in their actual production process).

As Wired’s design director Claudia de Almeida noted when she demoed the project on stage today, layouts in newsrooms today are often still created physically with paper, scissors and boards where designers arrange their layouts. “The wonderful thing about Project Context,” she said, “is that it takes the best of what we do in the analog world and recreates it digitally.” That, of course, is also true of Adobe’s other two hardware projects.

The Context system uses two 1080p high-def screens with a frame around it for picking up touch signals, as well as another screen set up as a Surface-like table in front of the other two screens. Because the screens are so large, you can actually see the individual pixels, but Macy hopes that once 4k screen become more affordable, that won’t be an issue.

There is also something about having these huge touchscreens that gets people energized, he said. It’s a great tool for team collaboration, Adobe believes, and the prototype currently supports up to 30 touch points.

Hands-On With Project Context

I had a chance to play with Project Context behind the MAX stage and it’s indeed a very cool experience. The layout is, for the most part, the interface. Assets are available in a horizontally scrolling bar at the top of the page and to add them to the layout. Swiping left and right with multiple fingers allows you to scroll, touching an image with one finger allows you to move it around on the page (or between pages) and you can obviously resize images, pages and perform other actions. The prototype also includes a web browser, though it was deactivated for the demo today.

In addition to the two-screen system, Adobe uses the Surface table-like setup that users can send individual images to. Users can put a keyboard on it and start writing notes onto the image or just start drawing on it with their finger. Once you’re done, you just swipe it back in the direction of the main screens and it’ll show up there again.

Adobe’s first idea, by the way, was to build a room that could be outfitted with Kinect-like sensors, Wii-like remotes and similar technologies. Adobe actually ended up building this room, but in the end, however, Macy said, “making gestures in the air just felt silly.” Once you have a touchscreen, touching just becomes the natural way to work with the software. The next project for the team, then, was to build a touchscreen-based drawing table (the team’s leader is a former architect). Using virtual rulers and similar tools just didn’t make all that much sense in this context, though, so the idea of Might and Napoleon was born – and some of those influences can obviously also be seen in Project Context.

As for the future of this project, as well as Mighty and Napoleon, it’s not clear where Adobe is going to go, but Macy believes that it does point toward a future and that Adobe needs to experiment with interface like Context to stay ahead of the game.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook’s social graph went missing from yesterday’s update to Path‘s smartphone app, and Facebook now confirms it has restricted Path’s API access. Path can no longer look up your Facebook friends, which prevents it from sending them invitations or suggesting you follow them. The move may be in response to Path spamming user’s contacts with invites last week.

Facebook tells me Path can still use Facebook as a login option and share posts to Facebook. However, its “Find Friends” access has been shut off similar to how Facebook disabled the option for In March for MessageMe, right after shutting off Voxer’s access to the social graph, even though Voxer connected to Facebook for well over a year.

However, those apps were formally cited as competitors. Facebook didn’t say exactly why Path lost access, leading me to believe the spam controversy may have been responsible. It was caught sending out text message invitations to users contacts at 6am last week, leading to significant backlash. Facebook hates being associated with spam, and its platform policies say it can remove API access from apps it thinks are being too aggressive. We’ve reached out to Path for its side of the story.

Until now, Path has let users invite their Facebook friends to download the app, and easily follow friends who already use it. But while you can still invite people from your Contact Book or Gmail contacts in the new 3.0.4 version of Path, the options for Facebook vanished. Oddly, Path’s own customer portal still bears the image of the old app, with Facebook plain to see.

Suffice it to say that losing the ability to invite Facebook friends could hinder the growth of Path, which hit 10 million registered users last week. The more networks the merrier, right? But people can invite their closest friends via text message or email. The bigger issue may be that it’s now harder to develop a micro-social graph on Path because you can’t just choose a subset of your Facebook friends. If you don’t follow or get followed by the right people, Path isn’t nearly as fun, and you won’t use it as much.

Possibly in an attempt to fill the void, Path has added Twitter, which could be quite fruitful for bringing in new users. Currently, Twitter users have no ability to create a more private network for close friends – unless they choose to lock their account – which is hardly the point of Twitter, a network which thrives on the oxygen of the public sphere. Twitter’s userbase skews more toward early adopters who might be interested in Path than Facebook users.

Despite the replacement, Facebook dropping the hammer is a serious blow to Path. Considering many believe it has a high churn rate and it refuses to provide active user counts, Path probably needs to be pulling in users however it can.

Additional reporting by Mike Butcher

[Image Credit: RGBstock / Mzacha Aginnt]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Snackchat! Taco Bell tweeted, “We’re on Snapchat” last night, urging their Twitter followers to add them for a “secret announcement” some time today. This is the first major brand to use Snapchat to reach customers, and could signal the beginning of Snapchat’s monetization.

Snapchat is an ephemeral photo messaging application that raised a $13.5M Series A in February. Taco Bell reached out to Snapchat on Twitter yesterday; after a couple of responses from Snapchat (below), Taco Bell announced that they’re on Snapchat at the handle “tacobell.”

@tacobell lol yes we should. Just had a delicious Doritos locos taco last night

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) April 30, 2013

@tacobell okay! If you send an email to support@snapchat.com we’ll make sure it gets to the right place!

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) April 30, 2013

In December, when Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel told me the company was prototyping monetization features, I wrote about the most likely ways the company could monetize:

With a very captive audience, Snapchat could have very profitable ads. Imagine a picture snap once a day or every 10 snaps where you have to hold the image and view the ad for five seconds before using the app more. Or an advertising video snap that played on its own for 10 seconds, instead of you holding it down to view.

The problem with most mobile ads is that they take up too much of the screen at random times (Facebook app newsfeed, anyone?) and both mobile and web ads are ignored by users as they adjust to where the ads are located and just scroll past them.

Snapchat could offer advertisers a highly engaged user for a very brief period of time.

The most interesting part of this Taco Bell development is that the company asked followers to add them on Snapchat. There are two settings for “Who can send me snaps”: friends and everyone. Snapchat sends all users, regardless of their settings, video snaps on holidays like Christmas and New Years. If Taco Bell is asking users to add them, it means they’re–at least for now–only sending snaps to people who add them. But, at least from the tweets above, it looks like there’s been some sort of collaboration between Taco Bell and Snapchat so far. 

Taco Bell doesn’t need Snapchat’s help to snap people who have friended Taco Bell. So the logical next step would be sending snaps to everyone, the way Snapchat sends holiday snaps to all users–regardless of settings and who they’ve friended.

This could be a very lucrative revenue source for Snapchat. Rather than banner ads covering part of the screen in snaps, users could ignore snap ads and simply not open them. But I think a lot of users, myself included, would open most of the snap ads out of curiosity. And obviously, an opened snap reaches highly engaged eyeballs, as it fills the whole screen, with the user physically touching the ad.

Of course, some users will be pissed off by ads invading their Snapchat inboxes, a far more private space than the public streams of social networks. For now, Taco Bell snapping to their “friends” is an interesting first step towards monetization.

I’ve Snapchatted Spiegel and Taco Bell asking for comment (seriously). I’ll update the post if I hear back and once Taco Bell sends out their surprise Snapchat announcement.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has added a new icon to News Feed posts to indicate whether the user is available to chat.

If a user is online, a green dot will appear next to their name along with their post. Users can click the green dot to open up a chat window and start a conversation. This could encourage users to start private messages with friends after they see one of their posts in the feed.

For now the feature applies to News Feed posts but not those on a user’s Timeline.

Facebook is putting increasing emphasis on its chat and messaging system. The new mobile Chat Heads feature in Facebook Home and Messenger makes it easier for users to read and respond to messages even when they’re in the middle of other tasks on their phone. This latest desktop feature also deeper integrates chat into another popular activity: browsing News Feed.

Some users with the new News Feed are also seeing two chat menus, one on the left and one on the right, as seen in the image below from AllFacebook writer Justin Lafferty. Names have been blocked out with white and black, but you can see the chat list in both the left-hand sidebar and in a window on the right. This duplicate functionality may just be a temporary bug.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Vibrant Media, which powers in-text ads and other contextual ad products, is going cross-platform today with the launch of a number of new units.

Some of those ad units are entirely new to Vibrant’s lineup, while others take the company’s desktop ads and optimize them for touch interactions. CEO Cella Irvine told me that there’s growing interest from ad agencies in campaigns that span desktops, smartphones, and tablets, and also in mobile-specific campaigns. Some of Vibrant’s existing ad units already worked on mobile, she said, but they weren’t really designed for non-desktop devices. The goal with today’s launch is to make sure “the experience is native to the device.”

Irvine walked me through quick demos of some of the units that are launching today. There’s a redesign of Vibrant’s full-screen Mosaic ads, which are now designed for tablet and tablet gestures (like tapping and pinching to expand), and which can launched from in-text or in-image ads. There’s also a Brand Flex unit built for smartphones, which allows users to navigate and filter through relevant brand content. And there’s a Dynamic Adhesion unit, which is a spin on the keyword-based advertising that Vibrant is best-known for — in this case, the ad is specifically tied to the keyword, so as you read an article, you might see multiple keyword-based ads, which collectively tell the advertiser’s story.

Vibrant is also offering versions of its Image and Lightbox ads that should work on mobile, the company says.

In a follow-up email, Irvine emphasized that the new units allow for “creativity at scale” — “A brand today doesn’t have many venues to tell its brand narrative across platforms,” she said.

And while there’s probably always going to be some grumbling about whether Vibrant’s ads are intrusive or annoying, Irvine said the mobile units will continue the company’s emphasis on “viewability and choice” — she said the viewer always has a choice about whether or not they want to engage with the ad. (And people are making that choice on desktops — one of Vibrant’s ad units only launches after users highlight a keyword through a three-second countdown, and Irvine said 4 percent of consumers actually do highlight the keyword long enough to activate the ad.)

As for monetizing the new cross-platform units, Irvine said she wants to move away from the idea that CPMs (the cost per thousand impressions) are “the only way to measure effectively across devices.”

“We believe that … CPE – an actual engagement by a user with an advertisement – along with viewability, dwell time and brand lift, will be the most important metrics for brand marketers in mobile,” she added.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch