5 hours.

That’s how long the average American spends daily on their smartphone and what should be called the “5 hour opportunity.” Go to Asia and the time is longer, head to Europe and it dips slightly. But no matter where you go and no matter how you look at it, people spend a lot of their waking hours engaged with their mobile devices. In fact, they actually spend twice the amount of time ‘playing’ on their mobile phones as they do watching TV.

So if you’re a marketer, brand strategist, advertiser, media planner or like-minded professional, the question is this, knowing that every day you have a 5 hour window of opportunity through which you can connect with audiences on mobile, how are you going to leverage these 5 hours? Are you going to do a media buy comprised of traditional video ads that are likely skipped the instant “skip ad” appears on-screen? Will your buy include your typical banner ads that go unseen? Perhaps you’ll go the social media route and post videos on your brand pages in hopes that your creativity is seen.

Clearly all these tactics have had their place in the past but that’s exactly what they are, they’re the past. The opportunity exists today to raise the advertising bar and deliver highly engaging and immersive brand experiences unlike any that audiences have ever seen.

Today’s digital video and display ads can take a decidedly new turn changing from that of brand storytelling to brand “storydoing” and “storymaking”. They can be a treasure trove of interactivity and can leverage the power of emerging platforms like 360 degree content, virtual reality and even augmented reality. Integrate new media technologies like these with the multitude of mobile sensory inputs found on smartphones and what you get is an incredibly powerful marketing and advertising tool capable of delivering personalized ad experiences and elevating the consumer-brand relationship to one with cross kinetic intent; one where advertisement is no longer viewed as an intrusion but rather as a welcomed visitor to the content consumption landscape.

Ads like these have been given the moniker “Panamorphic Ads” and are defined by their ability to incorporate both motion and emerging technology ad canvases to break the walls of traditional advertising and change the nature of interactivity with viewers. When a consumer experiences a Panamorphic ad, they are entering a highly interactive ad experience where they can engage with a brand in a very personal way. That’s due in part to the code within Panamorphic ad units that tell the ad what to do and how to behave when engaged with; making them “smart ads”. Through device movement, the ad can change, or “morph”, adapting to the consumer based on user activity.

International campaigns using Panamorphic ads are already outperforming both video and traditional rich media ads. This is because Panamorphic ads deliver a more immersive and custom brand experience which inherently drives more interactivity, which in turns creates more data, that can be used to personalize the experience which drives more data and so on. Panamorphic then is the access to and integration of the many mobile sensors (ie. accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, etc) and the other components being introduced with the plethora of new technology platforms coming (i.e. VR, AR, AI, IoT, Wearables, etc.)

Some say we’re still in the infancy stage of digital advertising and as the industry evolves there will most certainly be winners and losers. Arguably though, the winners in the future of digital ad engagement will be those who recognize the mobile device as a pivot point. It will be those who know how to harness the power of emerging technologies to create compelling Panamorphic ads and can master the sophisticated amassment of all this data with the goal of elevating the consumer-brand relationship to a two-way form of communication. Ultimately though, the winners will be those know how to best capitalize on the 5 hour opportunity.