Online men’s apparel retailer JackThreads, which has been known to set up temporary physical locations to drive real-world sales, is mobilizing the concept of a pop-up shop for a more personalized experience.

The rich media mobile ad campaign consists of a banner ad that, when expanded, presents a full page of personalized merchandise and offers. The expanded ad unit also mimics the look and feel of JackThreads’ mobile app to deliver a consistent shopping and brand experience.

“We’re rolling these units out across the billions of impressions on all major ad exchanges,” said Evan Schwartz, CEO of ActionX, New York.

“Users see an animated 320/50 mobile unit,” he said. “As users tap, the unit expands to fill the available screen; the content of this ad is fully dynamic, the product merchandized are either products the users have expressed interest in – ‘You May Like’ – and/or real-time display of the client’s most popular items – ‘Trending.'”

JackThreads is the launch partner for the Mobile Pop Up Shop rich media ad unit from ActionX.

Shoppable ads
Retailers are looking for ways to drive sales from their mobile advertising efforts, which can be a challenge given the small screen size on smartphones.

JackThreads, which sees more than 70 percent of its traffic coming from mobile devices, adopted the shoppable ads to be able to deliver highly targeted and engaging units to mobile users as a way to overcome some of the challenges associated with shopping on mobile.

The JackThreads campaign makes the expanded ad the shopping experience, eliminating a step for shoppers. This is important because mobile users are often fitting in a quick shopping session and are not going spend a lot time clicking around to find what they want.

The shoppable ads also enhance the relevance of retargeting campaigns by featuring personalized products and offers based on user behavior in mobile apps and Web sites.

Mobile retargeting
The ads can integrate behavioral data such as product views and shopping cart abandonment.

Impressions are served via device ID targeting to show personalized merchandise. Look-alike and other impressions show “trending” popular items.

The campaign is an expansion of JackThreads’ mobile retargeting strategy via ActionX, which was launched last year in advance of the holiday shopping season as a way to reach users of its mobile commerce application with relevant banner ads when they are inside other apps as a way to drive sales (see story).

The campaign is an example of how mobile retargeting efforts are growing as retailers begin to look beyond driving app downloads to how they can reach back out to customers who may have abandoned a mobile shopping cart or slowed their app use (see story).

“Should the user tap on an item, they are deep linked into the advertiser’s app,” Mr. Schwartz said.

“The user may also elect to close the expandable unit via the ‘X’ in the top right,” he said.

“The core technology product is shared across all clients; creative assets (messaging, images, logos) are specified by each client.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York