Google Makes Responsive Lightbox Ads Available on the AdWords Platform

Google announced in a blog post that they are now enabling the use of Lightbox ads across all screen sizes—desktops, smartphones, and tablets. The improved feature is now available to all advertisers worldwide.

From the announcement:

Creating ads that can run — and look beautiful — across the ever-expanding universe of the world’s more than 2 billion smart phones and tablets is complex to say the least. Last month, we announced that we’d be bringing our popular Lightbox format to mobile devices. Today we’re happy to share that these reinvented Lightbox ads are now available for all AdWords advertisers globally.

Google first introduced Lightbox to desktop users back in 2012, and the feature was brought to mobile devices in late September 2014. With the release of the enhanced format, advertisers can now seamlessly mix up images, videos, and maps within a single HTML5 ad; this ad, in turn, is optimized for all types of devices. The company also mentioned that advertisers will soon be able to integrate content from other services, like Google Shopping and Google+.

Lightbox ads are to be paid on a cost-per-engagement basis, which means that advertisers are assured that every dollar they pay corresponds to an action made by a target viewer. Advertisers are not charged if a user who encounters an ad does not expand it for viewing. Instead, they only pay once a user hovers over an ad on desktop or taps it on mobile.

Google said that several companies, including Universal McCann and Sony, are using Lightbox ads to reach out to their target audiences. Sony Electronics maximized the Lightbox format to advertise products, such as their 4K Ultra TV and Xperia smartphone. Sony Pictures, on the other hand, used Lightbox ads to offer a preview of their upcoming movie, Annie. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: Google Inside AdWords)

“We chose to use Lightbox ads for our Q4 campaigns because we needed our content to achieve scale across the web. Our clients spend a lot of time, money and energy creating video assets and making sure they get seen by the most qualified, engaged users is our top priority,” Deborah Gaudette, SVP for Digital Media at Universal McCann, told Google. “Google’s new Lightbox ads help us make sure that happens.”

Watch the video below to learn more about how to build Lightbox ads using different content such as images, videos, and maps.

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