As web masters and business owners we are always looking for ways to get more traffic to our websites. In addition to increasing organic traffic by using SEO, the online marketing strategy should include advertisements on mobile devices. The SEO efforts coupled with effective mobile advertising is perhaps the best way to reaching out to your target audience.

As we already know that more and more people are accessing the internet from their mobile devices, and on-line payments are quite common through mobiles…
I barely remember the last time I purchased movie tickets or ordered for food from my desktop! And I am not so much into using my mobile for transactions but the sheer convenience of executing these simple tasks has made me a convert!

In the light of the volume of people accessing the internet and buying from their mobile devices,  it is critical for marketers to be where their potential customers are.

There cannot be a more direct message for advertisers, your potential customers are shifting …shouldn’t you consider doing so as well?

Depending upon whether you are a start up or an established business, tapping the mobile traffic is highly recommended and worth considering. There are various options of reaching out to your target audience. Social networking sites and other high traffic relevant sites offer easy and cost effective advertising options to reach the mobile users. However, the down side of these options that are available to an advertiser today are that most of the ads that visitors get to view from their mobiles, typically take them to a third party site, and the third party site is sometimes so slow to load, because of the number of graphics and video, that maximum number of people drop off at that stage.

Move over traditional mobile advertising, Canvas is here!

Facebook has recently come up with Canvas, and it is really something! It is targeted to mobile users, the Ads are extremely creative but do not come in the way…these ads are not interruptive….people can ignore these ads, but it seems people are having a hard time resisting these ads:)

So far the user experience has been quite encouraging and I assume it is because of the way these Ads are presented.

A big part of the success is because of the speed….after clicking the Ad, the user is taken to a full screen page where the Ad downloads quickly, and the user can quickly scan through the compelling creative in a matter of seconds and take the required action.

Through Canvas, Advertisers now have more space and freedom to tell their story in the most creative and effective way. By providing the potential customer a visually appealing experience through the creative multimedia used in these Ads, advertisers are able to attract and retain the attention of their potential customers so that they may be persuaded to take the required action. Advertisers have the ability to mix and match and use still pictures, texts, videos to create these ads, since they are optimized for faster download, advertisers do not have to worry about the speed. People are quickly taking to it because it is so engaging, downloads faster, and also because they can interact with the ads by zooming on the image, and viewing it just the way they want it…

These are some of the features that are making canvas so popular and effective!

Depending upon whether an advertiser wishes to create a brand image or engage potential customers into become buying customers, canvas seems to have figured out a way to provide advertisers the right platform and technology to take their message forward.

Since Canvas is only for mobile, it is compatible with Android and ios as well. Advertisers would need access to “Power Editor” in order to start creating their canvas stories. Here is a link to the Facebook Canvas page.

I would love to hear your experience with Canvas.