The State of Mobile Advertising, Q3 2012
- 1. The State of Mobile Advertising
Q3 2012
Insights from Opera
The world’s leading mobile ad platform
10,000 + 40 BILLION + $400 MILLION +
projected revenue to
sites & applications ad impressions per month
mobile publishers in 2012
Publishers include … Advertisers include …
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
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- 2. The State of Mobile Advertising
iPhone continues as the top OS 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%.
Traf c share
iOS Android Other RIM Symbian
46.37% 25.66% 20.04% 4.40% 3.35%
OS share % of traf c % of revenue eCPM
iOS 46.37% 58.40% $1.64
- iPhone 30.43% 34.38% $1.48
- iPad 5.08% 17.19% $4.42
- iTouch 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
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- 3. The State of Mobile Advertising
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
Social
Business, Finance & Investing
Music, Video & Media
Games
Computers & Electronics
News & Information
Sports
Arts & Entertainment
Health, Fitness & Self Help
Other
0 6.25 12.5 18.75 25
% of revenue % of impressions
One noteworthy trend to watch is
the fast trajectory of total Social Social News & Information
Media impressions. As publishers in
Business, Finance & Investing Sports
this category enhance and optimize
Music, Video & Media Arts & Entertainment
their ad offerings, look for levels of
Games Health, Fitness & Self Help
monetization to climb accordingly.
Computers & Electronics Other
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- 4. The State of Mobile Advertising
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, Top 25 countries by impressions
the average ll rate improved from 85.2% to 87.4%.
United States
One area of particular interest is the widening gap Indonesia
between the average eCPM of US and EU5 countries and Canada
that of the global and “Rest of World” (ROW) countries. In
Q2, we saw the EU5 eCPM rate almost identical to the United Kingdom (EU5)
global average, while the ROW average was approximately India
17% less than the global average. Today, we find the EU5 Russian Federation
below the global average with the ROW trailing by almost
44%. Japan
Mexico
2% 2% Italy (EU5)
Australia
Vietnam
14% Africa Ukraine
Middle East France (EU5)
10% Asia Paci c
China
European Union
Central & Latin America South Africa
70% 1.3%
North America Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
Germany (EU5)
Singapore
Nigeria
eCPM by region Malaysia
Global average eCPM $1.31 Brazil
US eCPM $1.37 Philippines
EU5 eCPM $1.13 Spain (EU5)
Rest of World $0.73 Republic of Korea
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- 5. The State of Mobile Advertising
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
Social
Music, Video & Media
Business, Finance & Investing
Games
News & Information
Computers & Electronics
Sports
Arts & Entertainment
Health, Fitness & Self Help
Other
0 7.5 15 22.5 30
UK users Global average
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- 6. The State of Mobile Advertising
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.
53.9%
of UK traf c comes
from BlackBerry
14%
of US traf c comes
from Blackberry
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- 7. The State of Mobile Advertising
What’s next in Mobile Creative? Mobile Creative
Perhaps the most exciting part about mobile advertising is the
opportunity to be truly creative, the ability to use (and even invent)
best practices
entirely new types of ad units and visual experiences that push Challenge the user’s
consumers to interact and engage with the brand. expectations.
For Mazda, we used a “break-in”
As we noted in Q2, campaigns that take full advantage of the unit that enters from the outside
sophisticated capabilities of modern smartphones (e.g., HTML5, and places the ad in position. The
camera, video) result in higher dwell times and interaction rates expanded unit dynamically drags
post-click. the ad across the screen, causing
surprise, as the user is accustomed
This quarter, we’ve observed from our most successful creative to the static screen content of their
mobile web browser.
campaigns that those that emphasize fun and simplicity catalyzed
the most user interaction and brand stickiness, while innovative,
Appeal to the senses.
new ad units delivered click-through rates of 5% and higher. They
Mazda’s robotic arm effect was
also generated the most revenue and publisher satisfaction.
visually satisfying because of the
movement, and Fiat’s bright, bold
These best practices are illustrated below, in two campaigns we colors served to add an element
ran in the United Kingdom for two global automotive brands. of fun to its campaign – also
in alignment with the nature of
the brand.
Mazda
Dynamic creative demonstrating the car as strong, but light. 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
Fiat 500 consumers to swipe the color onto
A swipe changes the color of the car, showing customizability the car, letting them customize the
image as they would want to
customize their cars in real life.
SHOW REEL
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