Smartphones, In-App Ads Leading in Mobile
3 Sep, 2014 By: Doug McPhersonNEW YORK – Smartphones beat tablets and in-app advertising outdid the mobile Web in impression volume in the first half of 2014, according to mobile ad firm Medialets.
Among the findings in the company’s Mobile & Tablet Advertising Benchmarks report:
- 88.3 percent of mobile ads served January-June 2014 were served to handsets, with the remaining 11.7 percent served to tablets
- In-app inventory accounted for 58.2 percent of all ad impressions, while the mobile Web made up 41.8 percent of impressions
Despite smartphones’ big head start, the data predict tablets will command more attention. The click-through rate on tablets was 0.59 percent, 44-percent higher than the click-through rate on handsets (0.41 percent).
The report also predicts in-app advertising is set to become even more of a focus for advertisers. The click-through rate for in-app ads was 0.56 percent, compared to just 0.23 percent for the mobile Web.
Retail accounted for 37.9 percent of all mobile impressions during the first half of the year (other studies suggest retail is now the No. 1 vertical when it comes to spend in mobile real-time-bidding).
Combined, networks and exchanges accounted for 22.4 percent of all impressions. The breakdown: network (48.3 percent); publishers (29.3 percent); demand-side platforms – DSPs (18 percent); and exchanges (4.4 percent).
However, ad exchanges and DSPs are the two fastest-growing mobile inventory sources – and it’s not even close. Networks saw their inventory growth increase by 84.9 percent from Q1 to Q2, 2014, while publishers saw 71.7-percent growth. On the other hand, exchanges saw more than 500-percent growth quarter-over-quarter, and DSPs saw 455.6-percent growth.
For the report, Medialets says it analyzed more than 300 billion mobile ad impressions from Jan. 1-June 30. A company representative told MediaPost News: it’s "all mostly programmatic traffic … analyzed from publishers, networks, DSPs and exchanges.”