Tag: Stories

Hong Kong – The South China Morning Post (SCMP), the global news company that reports on China and Asia, has launched ‘Stories’, a snackable format of editorial content that serves to offer advertisers a premium and high-impact experience. ‘Stories’ builds upon SCMP Advertising’s strapline of ‘Content that Connects’, which was launched in the previous quarter of the year, and is a demonstration of its pledge to deliver quality editorial and commercial content fueled by the storytelling creativity of its consummate editorial team. 

Making its debut on the Style AMP site, ‘Stories’ weds the needs of users to discover personalised and tailored content with that of advertising brands to identify and engage with STYLE audience members in a seamless manner. STYLE is SCMP’s multimedia online portal for luxury lifestyle. 

SCMP said the new ‘Stories’ opens up new pockets of growth for advertisers as STYLE boasts an active monthly user rate that is north of 6 million (as of 2021) who are voracious consumers of high net worth lifestyle and pop culture content. 

“The new ‘Stories’ feature for STYLE is an incredibly exciting way for us to surface and recirculate content for discovery and consumption in a highly optimised manner. This increases the ROI of our clients’ investments while enhancing the experience of their target audience, wherever they may be based in the world,” says James Durston, associate editorial director at SCMP’s STYLE and Specialist Publications Department. 

“Bridging the gap has always been our purpose as we make it our everyday mission to understand our users’ habits off platform, insights garnered from which would determine our strategy in matching brands with their key audience. The resulting increase in reach directly translates into a strengthened value proposition for both our clients and readers,” Durston added. 

Meanwhile, Timmy Bankole, director for advertising business operations at SCMP, commented, “The introduction of ‘Stories’ deepens our relationship with our users and boosts the ROI of our advertisers’ respective campaigns. What we will see is an immediate uptick in efficiency and engagement across metrics — I cannot wait to see this feature unveiled across our [on-platform] properties.”

Singapore – Storyly, a user engagement platform based in the United States, is now available in APAC, helping marketers in the region achieve user engagement goals in their mobile apps and websites through the mobile content format – Stories.

Storyly Stories, by nature, provide mobile apps with an opportunity to communicate any message interactively without interrupting the experience and empower lifecycle marketing strategies from discovery to purchase and beyond to loyalty and advocacy. 

By using Storyly Stories, marketers can make use of advanced personalisation, targeting, content-automation capabilities, monetisation via Google AdMob or Ad Manager, and various interactive features such as polls, quizzes, countdowns, and call-to-action buttons to deliver a much more captivating mobile experience. 

Moreover, aiming to provide video-centric capabilities and help gather users’ attention starting from the discovery level without compromising the app’s performance and any media hosting cost, Storyly empowers its customers with interactive shoppable videos. With its intuitive studio and dashboard, Storyly also makes creating engaging content that fits the style and design of any mobile app and website effortless. 

Emre Fadillioglu, Storyly’s CEO, said that losing a user acquired is very costly in comparison to user retention and that brands have to get even more creative with how they engage with their users to avoid such a cost.

“On top of all, attention is a scarce resource today. So, marketers have to take the experience beyond the limits of the mobile screen and build engaging, immersive, interactive, and personalized communication with consumers. That’s what Storyly is aiming for. Storyly brings the leading mobile content format, Stories, that we are all familiar with into mobile apps and websites. Actually, that’s the reason why we call it ‘the missing piece to deliver captivating experiences,” he added.

Fadillioglu continued to say that APAC is a promising market for Storyly as the app market in the region is blossoming. He noted, “Our growth journey in the region has kicked off from Thailand and Singapore as the key markets but we are definitely looking to extend our footprint across the region as we grow.”

Mumbai, India – Celebrating the World Smile Day, India-based insurance company IndiaFirst Life has unveiled a campaign that would use mobile ad solutions mCanvas’ face-recognition technology.

The company will be using the new “Stories” ad format by mCanvas that would feature eye-catching text, photos, animations, gifs and videos.

The users start by browsing the IndiaFirst Life’s website on their mobile phones where they would see organic content, followed by sponsored ads as they swipe through. As they reach the copy: “When it comes to living a full life, protecting your happiness is essential!,”, a click-to-action (CTA) “Find out how” button enables the phone’s front camera. With the user’s permission, the user would be able to see their face on screen and see a message “That’s why we’d like to give you a reason to smile!’ that would prompt them to smile.” 

Their smile would then be detected that would trigger a smiley to appear on the screen and show IndiaFirst Life’s brand message “Iss Smile ko protect karna toh certain hai”, which means “To protect this smile is to be certain.” Finally, a “Know more” CTA button would appear which leads the user to the landing page to provide more information on the insurance policies.

IndiaFirst Life’s Chief Marketing Officer Sonia Notani, expressed her excitement about their brand’s collaboration with MCanvas.:

“Using ‘World Smile Day’ to further strengthen our brand proposition, we have partnered with mCanvas to bring this innovative ad on mobile to engage with our target audience. We are excited to explore mCanvas’ newest ad format – Stories.”

According to mCanvas Director Indrani Khanvilkar, “We are glad to see that this ad format has worked well for IndiaFirst Life and enriched the overall brand experience.”

mCanvas is a storytelling ad platform which creates sensory mobile web ads that effectively connect brands with their audiences. By utilizing the mobile device sensor and its other features, mCanvas experiences interactive and memorable.