Mobile Advertising: Better Phones yield higher Revenues

If you are an advertiser, you may be surprised by this stat – A thousand Ad impression on an iPhone generates over 12 times the revenue on average as compared to a Windows phone. This is according to the first edition of the State of Mobile Advertising report released by Opera Software.

The report, based on over 35 billion ad impressions, comes out with some interesting statistics which primarily shows that devices with better usability (i.e., larger screen size, touchscreen) and those with features that allow more interaction between the advertisement and the device’s functionality (e.g., click to call, expand, play video) have better monetization potential than less capable and less user-friendly devices.

iOS and Android mobile devices are the ones which yield much higher clicks and revenues as compared to other mobile platforms. According to the Opera report, iPad has the highest average eCPM (Revenue per 1000 impressions) of USD 3.96 across Opera Mobile ad platform.

Rich Media Ads

The report’s Rich Media Index points to the fact that rich media ads create more engagement and there by more conversions. 66% of mobile users that click through a video Ad will complete the interaction, with an average dwell time of 52 seconds. Photo-taking capabilities have an even higher dwell time (1 min 25 secs), and about half of consumers will continue to interact with the ad post-click thereby ensuring very high rate of conversion.

HTML 5 is becoming more and more mainstream and fast. The report finds that in 6 months from period between Jan 12 to Jun 12, HTML5 rich media and video ad executions nearly doubled from 28% to 51%

Mobile Advertising Revenues

Business & Finance categories clearly lead the mobile ad revenue chart accounting for over 30% followed by “news and Information” which accounted for close to 15%. As far as the geographical distribution goes, North America accounts for nearly three fourths of all the Mobile advertising revenue generated globally. Comparatively, Asia accounts for only 10% of over all revenue. India as a country stands 8th in the world for its mobile advertising revenue share.

The report also throws light on some interesting aspects of mobile advertisings:

- The ad networks with the highest fill rates tend to have lower eCPM payout rates, while those with high payout rates tend to have low fill rates.

- High paying ad networks’ eCPM rates fluctuate radically (as much as 370%), while ad networks with lower eCPMs (and high fill rates) fluctuate at lower levels (but still as much as 43%).