Fool-proofing Fat Fingers

Making accidental ad clicks on your mobile phone just got harder. Google has announced several new changes to reduce accidental clicks on mobile display ads, addressing fat finger ad clicks on mobile where a swipe for scrolling gets treated like a ‘tap’ to open the advertisement.

1. Having identified the border area (see above, left) as particularly prone to accidental clicks during scrolling, Google now makes certain that taps close to the edge of an image ad won’t register as clicks.
2. For in-app install ads and interstitial ads (see above, right) users won’t be able to click on the app icon because the close button is overlaid on that image. Users will need to click the call-to-action button.
3. Finally, ads will only become clickable when they’ve been onscreen for “a short period of time”. This gives users time to scan through the display ad.

If you are running Google display ads, you might want to note the timing of these changes when reporting clicks and click-through rates.

On the Facebook Front

Facebook announced this week that it’s testing a lead ad unit to make filling out forms on mobile devices easier for individuals,  and easier for businesses to gather that data. The new ad format auto populates contact information when the user is signed into Facebook.

As Facebook explained in a post on its business blog:

“The lead ads that we’re testing use a native signup flow within Facebook. This helps avoid a lot of the pain points usually associated with filling out forms, like having to leave one app and start a form in another app, and having to enter all of their information from scratch. Just a few taps and people are done.

“Like our other ad formats, we’ve built this ad type with privacy in mind. People can edit their contact information, and information isn’t sent to the business until a person clicks the ‘submit’ button. Advertisers may only use this information in accordance with their privacy policies, which we make available in the lead ad before people click submit. Advertisers are also restricted from re-selling lead information to third parties.”