MOBILE AD SPEND TRENDS

Mobile advertising company, Smaato, published a report earlier this month that highlighted global trends in mobile ad spend, analyzing an impressive 1.5 trillion ad impressions. Here are some top takeaways:

• In-App Ad Spend is far greater than mobile web spend: In-app ads account for the vast majority of spend as consumers spend more and more time inside just a few mobile apps. 94% of mobile ad spend is in apps, while just 6% is spent on ads for the mobile web. This number is up almost 20 percentage points compared with the same period a year ago.
• Mobile video ad spend grew 142% in Q2 2017. This is a massive shift. For reference it was 14% growth from Q4 2016 to Q1 2017. This shift is even more significant as Q4 tends to be the biggest ad spending period in a calendar year. This shift is likely due to a trend away from image to video due to a high consumer engagement with video.
• iOS is the most profitable platform (for now). iOS users generated more than twice as much ad revenue per user (ARPU) on average, even though Android generated 57% of the worldwide ad spend. Android does controls over 70% of the global market share, so that does make some sense. Key takeaway here is that reach is on Android while conversion efficiency should look to iOS. However what will be interesting is that with the new iOS 11 privacy and anti-tracking features being released today we may see a big impact into conversion efficiency for these mobile ads on Apple devices.

• In-app ad spending is where the majority of mobile ad spend is happening globally. In-app ad spend represents 94% of worldwide mobile ad spend totals, increasing from 91% last quarter (and 81% in Q3 2016). Emphasis on in-app ad strategies is important as consumers spend the majority of their time on mobile in just a few apps apps — app usage accounts for over 85% of the time a user spends on their mobile device.
• “Incentivized video” is trending . Spend on ads that users can view in exchange for in-game prizes, experienced 153% growth agin probably due to ROI — mobile apps saw up to 4X as much user retention than apps that did not use the format. Again — Apple may be killing off this format on iOS, but this time via App Store regulations.