• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, March 6, 2013

TubeMogul today announced that real-time buying of smartphone and tablet interactive video inventory is now available on their platform. The ads are available as pre-rolls, messages when an app is loading, or messages in between levels of a game. The interactivity of the ads include functions such "click-to-calendar" to add to a calendar event, or "click-for-location" to find the nearest retail stores.

This type of interactivity is nothing new, but it will likely work. If people are willing to click on obvious spam messages - "Free iPad 9! Click here!" - then they are going to be willing to click on relevant ads. 

Essentially, advertisers are vying with each other in real-time for the right to tell mobile users where to go and what to do in real-time. It makes sense that people are easier to influence via mobile because they are already on-the-go. It feels like we are just a couple of steps away from asking Siri to take us to the nearest gas station and getting the response, "Before I tell you how to get to get to the gas station, how about the latest deals from Old Navy? Click here for directions!"

The number of people available for distraction - er, I mean, targeting - is growing rapidly. TubeMogul claims that this is the first time available mobile video inventory has been centralized on one platform. That centralization helped TubeMogul reach 94.4 million available impressions for real-time buying per day in February. Additionally, the number of available impressions has been growing by 20.8% a week since the start of 2013. 

Mobile has become more and more of a focus for advertisers, as 28.2% YOY growth in the sector from Q4 2011 to Q4 2012 indicates. With there being close to 100 million
opportunities (and rising) for marketers to influence what people are doing this very second, real-time advertising has never been so powerful.

The biggest question should not be surrounding the effect of mobile ads according to data, but rather the affect the ads have on the day-to-day life of a consumer.