Hearst Magazines UK Premiers Innovative New Ad Format Powered by Celtra

PANDORA jewellery first brand to take advantage of high-impact, engaging mobile advertising format

London, UK – Celtra Inc. the leading creative, analytics and optimisation platform for display advertising has entered into a three-month exclusive partnership with Hearst Magazines UK to offer a new high-impact ad format ­ Reactive Pull ­ to its advertisers.

Hearst Magazines UK publishes 19 magazine brands and seven pure play digital brands including Cosmopolitan, Digital Spy, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar. The partnership with Celtra was piloted with PANDORA jewellery across Cosmopolitan and Red.

Reactive Pull is the latest in a series of innovative, agnostic ad formats from Celtra that build on superior user experience by focusing on brand awareness and interaction functionality. With its premium, top-of-the-page placement and highly unique banner interaction, Reactive Pull invites the user to pull the screen down to reveal the ad content with a reactive scale and cross-fade effect. After viewing, a swipe gesture simply dismisses the ad.

The PANDORA campaign demonstrated:

  • A pull expansion rate of 1.8% ­ this is 150% higher than Celtra’s Q4 2014 expandable banner format expansion rate benchmark ­ suggesting that Reactive Pull is a more engaging format due to its position, size and interaction functionality ­ and that a gradual, cross-fade effect works better than a traditional tap-to-expand call to action.
  • A video consumption rate of 69% ­18% higher than Celtra’s March 2015 benchmark for expandable banner campaigns ­ suggesting that the video experience within this innovative format is more engaging for users than within expandable banner campaigns.

In addition, Hearst Magazines UK has also introduced Celtra’s high-impact interstitial ad format, Interscroller, to its standard display offering ­ successfully rolling this out in a recent campaign for Marc Jacobs.

Rob Wilkin, Head of Commercial Product, Hearst Magazines UK, says: “At Hearst we’ve seen a growing demand for ad formats that offer an experience outside of standard mobile banners, specifically formats that give advertisers a larger space within which to communicate their message.”

“The Reactive Pull is the first in a new series of Celtra mobile formats that Hearst is embedding into its product offering to help advertisers and agencies achieve their performance targets and creative ambitions. As the market shifts its focus to viewability, we are making changes to our site to promote ad visibility.”

Caitlin Steele, Online Marketing Manager, PANDORA, said: “The goal of our brand advertising campaign was to showcase our product in the best way in the run-up to Mother’s Day. Hearst Magazines UK presented us with a new and innovative ad format that suited the needs of our campaign perfectly. It provides a great native user experience by adapting to the look and feel of the entire page, which significantly increases the engagement of our customers.”

Matevz Klanjsek, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Celtra, commented: “Following the launch of the hugely successful Interscroller format, Reactive Pull combines the storytelling power of a large creative canvas with mobile native user experience. With its top-of-the-page placement it’s an ideal format for brand advertising, as the performance of the pilot campaign clearly demonstrates. We look forward to continue working with Hearst Magazines UK and keep delivering superior ad experiences to the market.

About Celtra Inc.

Celtra empowers agencies, media suppliers and brand leaders alike with the leading creative technology for data-driven brand display advertising across mobile, tablets and desktop.

AdCreator 4 is built to run large-scale and complex campaigns. It is a single platform for streamlined ad creation, performance optimised serving and consolidated reporting with common metrics across all screens. For more information, visit Celtra at www.celtra.com or @CeltraMobile on Twitter.

Celtra is headquartered in Boston (MA), with offices in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London (UK), Tokyo (JP) and Ljubljana (SI).

About Hearst Magazines UK

Hearst Magazines UK is the trading name of National Magazine Company Ltd, established in 1910 by William Randolph Hearst, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hearst Corporation.

Hearst Magazines UK publishes 19 magazine brands and seven pureplay digital brands including Cosmopolitan, Digital Spy, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar.

It is the largest digital magazine publisher in the UK with a digital audience of 44 million* monthly unique users and it reaches one in three UK women and one in six UK adults.

Hearst Magazines UK has interests in two joint ventures in partnership with some of the world’s best publishers:

  • Hearst Rodale UK: A 50:50 joint venture with Rodale Inc, which focuses on health and wellbeing. Hearst-Rodale publishes Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Runner’s World, their companion sites and pureplay sites (triathletesworld and fetcheveryone).
  • COMAG: A 65:35 joint venture with Condé Nast, one of the U.K.’s largest magazine distributors.

For more information, please visit www.hearst.co.uk.

* (Google analytics non-deduped Dec 2014.)