The State of Mobile Advertising, Q3 2012

Insights from Opera
The world’s leading mobile ad platform

In this edition of the State of Mobile Advertising report, based on data collected from Opera’s subsidiaries AdMarvel, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising, we will cover insights from the third quarter of 2012, with a focus on three key areas of business:

  1. A look at monetization across devices, geography and publisher category
  2. A deep dive into the United Kingdom — the top performing market in Europe
  3. What’s next in mobile ad creative, featuring examples from two global automotive brands

iPhone is the top smartphone device in monetization performance

Once again, this quarter, iOS leads the pack in monetization performance with an average eCPM of $1.64. This outperforms the global average eCPM of $1.31 by over 25%.

OS Share % of traffic % of revenue eCPM
iOS 46.37% 58.40% $1.64
— iPhone 30.43% 34.38% $1.48
— iPad 5.08% 17.19% $4.42
— iPod Touch 10.81% 6.83% $0.82
Android 25.66% 16.79% $0.88
RIM 4.40% 4.15% $1.06
Symbian 3.53% 0.99% $0.37
Other 20.04% 19.67% $1.28

Sports = No. 1 category for mobile ad revenue

Mobile apps drive 73% of revenue across the platform

The overperformance of mobile web is attributed to the relative scarcity of impressions, which results in a higher eCPM for publishers.

Business, Finance & Investing continues to generate the most revenue per impression

Among all of the publisher categories, Business, Finance & Investing generates more revenue per impression than any other publisher category.

However, this last quarter, the rapidly growing Sports category — closely followed by Music, Video & Media — caught, and then overtook, the Business category in terms of total revenue.

Site category

One noteworthy trend to watch is the fast trajectory of total Social Media impressions. As publishers in this category enhance and optimize their ad offerings, look for levels of monetization to climb accordingly.

North America is the home of 7 out of 10 mobile ad requests

Across the Opera platform, North America (United States & Canada) continues to generate the vast majority of ad requests (70%).

While the list of top countries is similar to that of Q2, the average ll rate improved from 85.2% to 87.4%.

One area of particular interest is the widening gap between the average eCPM of US and EU5 countries and that of the global and “Rest of World” (ROW) countries. In Q2, we saw the EU5 eCPM rate almost identical to the global average, while the ROW average was approximately 17% less than the global average. Today, we find the EU5 below the global average with the ROW trailing by almost 44%.

Percent of impressions
Top 20 Countries by Impressions
  1. United States
  2. Indonesia
  3. Canada
  4. United Kingdom (EU5)
  5. India
  6. Russian Federation
  7. Japan
  8. Mexico
  9. Italy (EU5)
  10. Australia
  11. Vietnam
  12. Ukraine
  13. France (EU5)
  14. China
  15. South Africa
  16. Netherlands
  17. Saudi Arabia
  18. Germany (EU5)
  19. Singapore
  20. Nigeria
  21. Malaysia
  22. Brazil
  23. Philippines
  24. Spain (EU5)
  25. Republic of Korea
eCPM by Region
regioneCPM
Global Average eCPM$1.31
US eCPM $1.37
EU5 eCPM $1.13
Rest of World $0.73

Deep dive into the United Kingdom:
Mobile as a culture companion, wellness tool

The United Kingdom is our best performing market in Europe, ahead of Italy and France. It’s a market with much promise: according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) advertising expen- diture report, mobile ad spend grew 132% year-over-year to reach $291.6 million in the first half of 2012. Mobile now accounts for 7% of all digital ad spend in the United Kingdom.

We took a deeper look at the types of impressions across our UK traffic and found that UK mobile users are similar to the rest of the world in that their top destinations are Social Networking (30%) and Music, Video & Media (22.5%) sites and apps. Comparatively, visits to these categories are slightly higher than the global average.

However, UK mobile users are considerably less likely than their global counterparts to play games, consume content about computers & electronics and use their phones for sports information. They are more likely to interact with content in the Arts & Entertainment and the Health, Fitness & Self Help categories.

Impressions

Strong showing for UK smartphone usage

While the rest of the world, particularly the United States, seems to be moving away from RIM’s BlackBerry device, UK adoption is still strong. Traf c from BlackBerry devices is nearly 4 times that of the US levels.

What’s next in Mobile Creative?

Perhaps the most exciting part about mobile advertising is the opportunity to be truly creative, the ability to use (and even invent) entirely new types of ad units and visual experiences that push consumers to interact and engage with the brand.

As we noted in Q2, campaigns that take full advantage of the sophisticated capabilities of modern smartphones (e.g., HTML5, camera, video) result in higher dwell times and interaction rates post-click.

This quarter, we’ve observed from our most successful creative campaigns that those that emphasize fun and simplicity catalyzed the most user interaction and brand stickiness, while innovative, new ad units delivered click-through rates of 5% and higher. They also generated the most revenue and publisher satisfaction.

These best practices are illustrated below, in two campaigns we ran in the United Kingdom for two global automotive brands.

Mazda

Dynamic creative demonstrating the car as strong, but light

Fiat 500

A swipe changes the color of the car, showing customizability

Mobile Creative best practices

Challenge the user’s expectations.

For Mazda, we used a “break-in” unit that enters from the outside and places the ad in position. The expanded unit dynamically drags the ad across the screen, causing surprise, as the user is accustomed to the static screen content of their mobile web browser.

Appeal to the senses.

Mazda’s robotic arm effect was visually satisfying because of the movement, and Fiat’s bright, bold colors served to add an element of fun to its campaign – also in alignment with the nature of the brand.

Invite the user to create and customize.

Mobile users are accustomed both to playing games and creative expression such as taking photos, sketching or even including emoticons within email and text messages. Ads that allow them to continue to play and create on their phones offer incredible brand engagement opportunities. The Fiat campaign, for example, allowed consumers to swipe the color onto the car, letting them customize the image as they would want to customize their cars in real life.

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For more information about the State of the Mobile Advertising report, please contact Falguni Bhuta falgunib[at]opera.com, +1 650 625 1262, ext. 1001.

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