By now we’ve all seen and heard much about the six IAB Rising Star Units. It’s no surprise Centrons are eager to hit the ground running to bring these new, sexy ad units to our advertisers. Creative teams are busy building these out and publishers are working hand-in-hand with their web development teams to get them approved. Historically speaking, if an advertiser wanted to make an impact, they’ve been somewhat limited to sliding billboards, interstitials and overlays. The new IAB Rising Star units are a perfect combination of splash and functionality. These ads are high impact and cannot be missed.

eMarketer expects overall spending on mobile advertising in the U.S., including display, search and messaging-based ads served to mobile phones and tablets, to rise 180% this year to top $4 billion (previously forecasted at a slower growth of 80% in September). The jump in growth is largely attributed to “native” ad formats like Facebook’s mobile newsfeed ads and Twitter’s Promoted Products. 

Quality Matters. 2013 is expected to be a new year rallied around viewable impressions. As part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, endorsed by the IAB, ANA and 4A’s, widespread adoption of viewable impressions as a measurement standard for advertisers and publishers is set to take root, according to AdWeek.

Mobile display is proving its worth according to eMarketer. As for success metrics, mobile CTR surpasses online advertising norms while engagement with rich media ads have shown significant lift to brand metrics. U.S. advertisers are on track to spend $1.8 billion on mobile display advertising in 2012 and this number is expected to grow in 2013. Read More: Mobile Display Proves Its Worth

‘Tis the Season! According to comScore, $16.4B has been spent online (16% increase vs. the corresponding days last year). Cyber Monday reached $1.46B in online spending (up 17% vs. a year ago), representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1B in sales. Holiday shoppers are clearly hungry for digital deals.