Opera Mediaworks Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report

To start, we’d like to note the tremendous growth within the mobile ad market in the one
year since we first began publishing the State of Mobile Advertising report. In Q2 2012,
the Opera Mediaworks platform supported 9,000 sites and applications with some 35
billion mobile ad impressions per month. Today, we serve over 13,000 sites and apps, with
well over 60 billion impressions per month.
In 2011, we facilitated $240 million in revenue, which leapt to $400 million in 2012.
So far in 2013, we are on track to deliver over $600 million in revenue to mobile publishers
and application developers – a significant figure that solidifies this platform as a major
player in the mobile ad space.
In this edition of the report, we continue to share data around global mobile ad traffic and
monetization by device, geography and publisher category – with some additional insights
into trends in these areas that have emerged in the past year. We will also report on:
The Apple vs. Samsung battle, as seen from mobile ad traffic
Seasonality in the American market
Mobile ad benchmarks and most effective ad types
Advertisers include …
Insights from Opera Mediaworks the world's largest mobile ad platform
sites & applications
13,000 60 BILLION
ad impressions per month
400 MILLION
global consumers reached
Q2 2013
The State of Mobile Advertising
© Copyright 2013, Opera Mediaworks. All rights reserved.
Publishers include …
1

iOS continues as the top OS in monetization
and regains lead in mobile phone impression volume
Overall, iOS is the clear market leader in both impression volume and revenue generation,
capturing nearly 44% of all ad impressions and almost half of all revenue.
However, when comparing mobile phones using iOS and Android the two OS are in a virtual
tie for share of ad impressions, with just over 30% each. Late last year, Android inched
ahead of iPhone with a slight lead (31% vs. 29%), but iPhone has been inching back and,
within one percentage point ever since.
The iPhone still triumphs in terms of monetization, however, with 36.4% of revenue vs.
Android’s 27.8%. And while in Q1 Android tablets began appearing in our data set, their
market share is still almost imperceptible.
iOS
43.75%
Android
31.24%
Other
16.21%
Symbian
5.16%
RIM
3.37%
Windows
0.26%
OS Share % of revenue
Windows 0.26% 0.30%
Other 16.21% 15.27%
5.16% 1.59%Symbian
3.37% 5.41%RIM
31.24% 28.08%Android
iOS 43.75% 49.36%
iPhone 30.88% 36.44%
iPad 8.04% 10.21%
Phone 30.58% 27.76%
Tablet 0.66% 0.32%
4.83% 2.71%iTouch
2

Samsung nipping on Apple’s heels for device market share
Apple is still the top manufacturer of mobile devices, with 43.8% of all impressions
served on its devices. Samsung is the strongest contender from the rest of the pack,
with a 17.4% share. Among tablets, Apple captures the lion’s share (91.2%) with Samsung
following at 6.1%.
However, when segmenting the view to focus solely on Android device manufacturers,
Samsung emerges as the clear leader, with 58.5% of impressions going to Samsung
devices. HTC, Motorola and LG fall far behind, all in the 7-11% range.
Manufacturer Android Tablet
3
Samsung
HTC
Motorola
LG
SonyEricsson
Other
58.45%
10.88%
8.70%
7.20%
2.24%
12.53%
Apple
Samsung
Acer
Other
91.20%
6.11%
1.15%
1.54%
Apple
Samsung
Nokia
Rim
HTC
43.75%
17.41%
10.43%
3.49%
3.09%
Motorola 2.75%
Other 19.08%

Baseball season pushes Sports
to the No. 1 category for publisher revenue
As we’ve seen from previous quarters, mobile sites and apps in the Music, Video & Media category consis-
tently receive the most ad impressions, and those in the Business, Finance & Investing category produce
the highest revenue per impression.
However, in terms of total revenue generation this quarter, Music, Video & Media loses its No. 1 spot and
falls to third place, behind Arts & Entertainment. The Sports category vaulted to the top as a direct result of
the opening of Major League Baseball season. a
Bu F a
Mu , V d M d a
C u r E r
N w f r a
r
H a
Ga
Ar E r a
r
% of revenue
% of impressions
Site category
Music, Video & Media
Computers & Electronics
Social
Other
News & Information
Arts & Entertainment
Games
Sports
Health, Fitness & Self Help
Business, Finance & Investing
7.25 14.5 21.75 290
4

Ad requests and impression volume continue to grow worldwide
The United States drives the majority of ad requests and revenue on the Opera Mediaworks
platform, but it is seeing a slight drop in global market share. In Q1 2013, the U.S. share of
requests was 50.67%, while this quarter it represents 49.3% of the market.
The United States is still the biggest market in terms of revenue, with nearly 3 out of every 4
dollars in transactions taking place in the U.S. market. And, overall, the total volume of mobile
ad requests and impressions in the United States is increasing.
Africa
Middle East
Asia Pacific
Europe
Americas (non-U.S.)
United States
Top 20 countries
Spain
South Africa
Australia
Nigeria
Vietnam
Brazil
Ukraine
Japan
Saudi Arabia
Malaysia
United States
United Kingdom
Italy
Canada
India
Indonesia
Russian Federation
Germany
Mexico
France
7.16%
4.45%
2.45%
48.90%
21.18%
15.86%
5

US consumers demonstrate clear seasonal use patterns
We can see the effects of seasonality when a time series of data points such as traffic or
revenue exhibit cyclical variation. The most common example of seasonality is how retail
sales peak during the holiday season and quickly fall off in January.
When comparing monthly ad impressions from first half of 2013 to those from 2012, we can
see a clear cyclical variation that shows how mobile phone use varies throughout the first
half of the year.
6
%ofadrequests
0.19
0.18
0.17
0.16
0.15
0.14
0.13
0.12
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2012 2013Second half 2012

The post-holiday hangover
As the holiday season comes to a close in Janu-
ary, mobile use is fairly high. It seems that Amer-
icans remain in close contact with each other and
“play around” with their new mobile devices and
gadgets – many of which were likely received as a
holiday gift. As the holiday feeling subsides, users
go back to work, and we enter into one of the
lowest volume periods of the year.
The spring surge
Following the February “post-holiday trough,” we
see a surge in usage beginning with March and
lasting well into April. This peak season starts as
better weather comes to most parts of the country,
and the infamous “spring break” season occurs.
Summer cooldown
With June and the onset of summer, we see a drop
in mobile ad impressions. Users are back at work,
and most schools and universities begin their long
summer break. This creates a temporary decline
in mobile phone use, as the younger demographic
falls out of touch with each other, and all users focus
on vacation, time with family and outdoor activities.
Ascent into the holidays
Beginning in October, we see a steady climb into
the holiday season. Vacations are over, and users
are back at work. The school year is in full gear,
multiple sporting events are occurring, and as the
holidays get closer, mobile use is particularly
intensive, as shoppers use their phones to aid in
purchasing decisions and social activities.
7
Ascentinto
the
holidays
Spring
s
urge
Summ
er
cooldown
The post-hol
idayhangover

Rich media, in-app campaigns outperform banner, mobile web
Rich media ads are becoming a more popular choice
for advertisers, but do they really work better? We
took a closer look at 378 mobile ad campaigns
running in the United States during the month of May,
each with over one million impressions. We found
that, on average, rich media campaigns performed
far better than standard banner ads, sometimes as
much as 400%.
Breaking it down a bit further, we saw that rich media
ads served within mobile applications were more
compelling than those served on the mobile web.
Users clicked on in-app ads 1.53% of the time, vs.
1.12% for mobile web ads. Standard banner ads, by
comparison, average a 0.39% click-through rate
when served in-app and 0.32% when displayed on
a mobile website.
Taken together, we see that overall in-app ads
perform 1.7X better than mobile web, but they are
still the minority. The number of ad campaigns and
impressions on the mobile web vs. in-app is nearly a
3:2 ratio.
WebIn-app
Campaigns
58%42%
Impressions
56%44%
CTR
1.53% 1.12%
Rich Media Ads
0.34%0.58%
Overall
0.39% 0.32%
Standard Banner Ads
CTR
8

Advertisers dive into rich media with tap-to-expand and mobile video ad units
Currently, standard banner ads (300x50 and 320-50)
make up more than half of the campaigns on the
platform, followed by leaderboards (728x90) and
MREC (300x250).
In the past quarter, we’ve seen advertisers begin to
adopt relatively new but highly effective ad types
such as tap-to-expand and VAST interstitial (mobile
video) units.
These two types in particular are favorites of premi-
um brand advertisers who are looking to share unique
content and deepen engagement with consumers
rather than “light touch” metrics such as brand aware-
ness or low-end conversions.
Banner (350x50 / 320x50)
Fullpage
Leaderboard (728x90)
MREC (300x250)
VAST insterstitial
Auto-expansion
Interstitial
Tap to expand
Interactive video
9
52%
13%
1%
1%
1%
16%
4%
6%
6%

CTR %impressions
Travel is top performing category, followed by Entertainment and Mobile Content
To better understand not only what types of campaigns (e.g., rich media, in-app) are performing the best
in mobile, but also which types of advertisers are seeing great results, we took a smaller sampling of
campaigns from the platform and dug into their performance.
We found that the best performing ads — those which achieve click-through rates well above 1% — are
in the Automotive, Entertainment, Mobile Content and Travel categories. Unsurprisingly, all of the top
campaigns in these categories were rich media, though just half of them were in-app vs. mobile web.
Advertisers promoting products or services in the Apparel, Food, Games and Sports categories had
some of the highest impression volume and number of campaigns, but their best cilck-through rates
were significantly lower.
Category
Best performers Highest impression numbers
CTR
Apparel & Accessories
Automotive
Beauty & Health
Food
Entertainment
Games
Mobile Content
Mobile Phone (Device)
Mobile Phone (Services)
Personal Finance
Sales (eBay, Amazon)
Sports
Travel
0.22%
1.07%
0.81%
0.49%
1.97%
0.88%
1.59%
0.35%
0.70%
0.19%
0.18%
0.21%
2.61%
10
Travel
Entertainment
Automotive
MobileContent
Apparel
Food
Games
Sports

Opera Mediaworks Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (19)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (18)

Similar to Opera Mediaworks Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report

Similar to Opera Mediaworks Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Opera Mediaworks Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report