MRAID, or “Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions” is the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence’s project to define a common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media ads that will run in mobile apps.
Summary
As rich media display advertising in mobile applications and on the mobile web has become more popular over the last several years, various innovative companies have accepted the challenge of creating an ecosystem for mobile ad serving. Innovation in mobile rich media ad serving has led to many exciting possibilities for content publishers and advertisers, but it has also created inefficiencies that often delay and inhibit the optimal monetization of content.
Simplifying the process for designers of ad creatives significantly increases the likeliness that agencies will leverage mobile into their media buys. Advertisers want to review compelling creative, approve it and decide to buy a specific inventory of mobile media, regardless of which device platform, application, or technology is used to display the media.
The IAB created MRAID in order to help mobile rich media advertising scale more successfully. The two versions of MRAID (v1 and v2) enable a variety of mobile rich media ad types and provide clarity regarding which publishers and networks support which types of rich media ads.
The IAB released the original version of MRAID v2 in September, 2012. In April, 2013, the IAB issued a revised version of MRAID v2, which removes some areas of ambiguity in the specification to encourage greater consistency in implementation and provide greater stability for creators of MRAID ads.
What is MRAID?
MRAID, or “Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions” is the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence’s project to define a common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media ads that will run in mobile apps. This is a standardized set of commands, designed to work with HTML5 and JavaScript, that developers creating rich media ads will use to communicate what those ads do (expand, resize, get access to device functionalities such as the accelerometer, etc) with the apps they are being served into.
Today different apps (incorporating different rich media vendors’ SDKs) have disparate requirements in terms of the APIs that creative developers must use to communicate with the app. Therefore, the same creative has to have its code rewritten in order to run across different apps. Developing a single API that diverse SDK vendors will support is the goal of MRAID.
This means that MRAID compliant rich media ads will run within MRAID compliant applications from any publisher using an MRAID compliant SDK. Put another way, agencies will be able to quickly and easily run creative across applications from different publishers.
