Google recently announced it would bring its Lightbox ad format to mobile devices. They’re now available to AdWords advertisers globally.

“With Lightbox ads, it’s easy to use existing creative assets to create beautiful, engaging ads that look great on any screen size,” says Google’s James Beser. “These ads pull assets from your YouTube channel, can use uploaded images, or your Google Maps listings to build full screen experiences within a standard Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) ad size. The ability to integrate content from other Google products – like Shopping listings, G+ pages – is coming soon. Because these ads are built in HTML5, using responsive design, the assets dynamically fill the publisher site, mobile app, screen, or device — desktop and mobile.”

“Lightbox ads are great at driving brand consideration because they’re billed on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) basis,” he says. “This helps your digital display dollars go further because your brand’s experience automatically finds a qualified audience — and you don’t pay if people don’t expand and engage with the creative experience. This expansion happens when people hover over your ad for two seconds to expand it on a desktop, or tap to expand it on a mobile phone or tablet. Plus, the optimization engine behind Lightbox ads learns over time so your campaigns get better at reaching the audience most likely to engage with your message as your campaign runs. Like all of Google’s display ad offerings, Lightbox ads work seamlessly with our audience solutions and can be measured using Brand Lift reporting.”

You can see what Sony and Universal McCann have done with the ads here.

Google says it will be adding additional functionality to the format in 2015.

Image via Google