Advertising Had to Learn to Fit the Feed

The phone changed the shape of the ad and the behavior around it. In this Fox Business segment, Matt Britton examines why the move from desktop to mobile required brands to rethink how they earned attention.

Digital advertising had surpassed $40 billion in 2013, overtaking broadcast television for the first time. Matt argues that the device shift within that growth mattered: a mobile feed gives a brand a very different setting from a desktop page.

Consumers now spend nearly three hours per day on their phones. They carry them everywhere: at retail, at work, and at home. The phone has become the dominant screen. For brands, that creates both opportunity and challenge.

On desktop, advertising was relatively simple. Brands placed banner ads alongside content on portals like Yahoo and other websites. The layout included clear ad zones such as right-hand rails and header placements.

Mobile eliminated that structure.

There is no traditional banner space on a phone screen. Instead, content lives inside a continuous feed. That means brands cannot simply “throw” ads onto a page. They must earn their place within the stream.

Matt describes this as a structural shift from advertising to content. Brands must create material that is interesting, shareable, and relevant enough to appear naturally within a user’s feed.

This creates significant pressure on companies built around traditional ad production models. Writing a large media check no longer guarantees visibility. The new question is: does the content deserve to be seen?

Some brands, like Red Bull, GoPro, and Xbox, have a natural advantage because their products align easily with aspirational or visually compelling content. More utilitarian brands face greater difficulty. A brand selling feminine care products, for example, must work harder to define a meaningful cultural territory that resonates authentically.

Matt highlights two strategic responses:

First, brands are increasingly listening to social conversations. By identifying advocates, interests, and behavioral patterns, they can create content aligned with what their consumers already care about.

Second, brands are partnering with influencers. Instead of relying solely on owned channels, they leverage creators with established audiences to insert branded content directly into feeds.

Video has become central to this strategy, particularly short-form video designed for rapid consumption. Matt references a Visa campaign built around six-second Vine clips. The content was intentionally designed for how users interact with mobile feeds: quick flicking and short attention spans. He calls it “designing for the flick.”

A phone feed gives a brand very little room to be irrelevant. Matt’s argument is to understand the audience, the format and the behavior first, then create something that belongs there.

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