The range of handsets on the market has meant advertisers need to supply multiple versions of their ads. This has acted as a deterrent to mobile advertising adoption.

To simplify the process, the Mobile Marketing Association has created mobile advertising guidelines specifically for the EMEA region, to make it easier for marketers to develop mobile advertising campaigns and protect the consumer experience while ensuring the campaigns are delivered consistently on the majority of mobile handsets.

The guidelines cover banner ads, recommended aspect ratios and banner dimensions, maximum file size, file formats and other technical specifications. The MMA plans future releases which will cover SMS, MMS, downloadables, messaging, video/TV and Bluetooth.

Dimensions and aspect ratios

The recommended aspect ratios for banner ads are 6:1 (default) and 4:1 (extended) because:

• Having two aspect ratios provides flexibility of layout and positioning in differentcontexts.
• 6:1 is the default recommendation that every publisher should be able to deliver.
• 4:1 is the extended size for optional use in campaigns for those who have thepossibility to offer bigger ad formats within their sites.
• Keeping the aspect ratio constant simplifies resizing of images and reduces effort.
• Both are sufficiently large to provide an effective advertising experience
• yet small enough not to be intrusive.

Given the above aspect ratios it should not be necessary to give overall dimensions as well since ads can be resized dynamically by some serving technologies. However, to allow for those that cannot and to aid with design the recommend widths are 120, 168, 216 and 300 pixels.

What is meant by this is that the creative treatment should probably vary with the broad ranges of screensizes. What works on a PDA will not look good on an older phone and four distinct clusters of screen size are apparent. This has several benefits:

• By keeping the banner widths to four sizes limits the effort of creative production.
• The widths chosen provide a good fit for the majority of mobile phones
• while still ensuring a minimal amount of “white space” is left on the browser to delineate the banner as an advertisement.
• The widths chosen provide for an exact pixel height for both ratios defined
• which simplifies scaling of the creative.

File sizes and types

The maximum file size for the largest static banner ad has been set at 5 KB. There is no common practice so far for animated banners. However, it is recognised that animated banners will require larger file sizes than static banners and these are being discussed presently.

File types supported are JPEGs and GIFs, whilst some top-end phonessupport PNGs and some legacy phones still use WBMPs.