Flipboard fuses interactive mobile ads into its personalized magazines

The online personal magazine app Flipboard launched an interactive feature today that infuses full-page interactive ads into its mobile offerings.

Clients are apparently impressed, and Gucci, Lufthansa, Sony, and Chrysler are the company’s pilot partners for today’s launch.

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The launch of Flipboard’s mobile video interactive ads dovetails with a growing chorus in the nascent video mobile ad sector, with U.S. ad firms and marketers spending about $1.5 billion on mobile video ads by the end of 2014, up from the $722 million spent last year.

The ecosystem for video advertising is slowly emerging, eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman told VentureBeat. He described interactive video ads as the last frontier in mobile.

Christine Cook, Flipboard’s advertising head, said in an email to VentureBeat late Monday:

“The type of advertising we’ve developed on Flipboard is focused on brand building; creating brand awareness, brand affinity and brand preference. As more and more people watch video on their mobile devices, we wanted to offer our advertisers the possibility of adding video to the beautiful full-page ads they’re already running in Flipboard.”

Mobile video ads accounted for nearly 19 percent of all digital video ad spending last year, a number that will climb to nearly 26 percent by the end of this year, according to Hallerman.

“And by the year 2018, the number will quadruple to over $6 billion. This is huge growth,” Hallerman said.

“Mobile video ads,” Hallerman said, “are important.”

Flipboard touts itself as a personal online publication that enables users to track and keep tabs from sources that interest them. With the app, you can, in essence, craft your own online magazine. You can check out Flipboard here.