Mobile advertising: In-app overtakes web channel, games the big winner

• Opera Mediaworks releases mobile marketing report
• Games top app category for ad impressions in APAC

 
IN-APP advertising is overtaking the mobile web channel across almost all Asia Pacific markets, according to the Mobile First Insights (MFI) report from Opera Mediaworks.
 
Click-through on apps was found to be between 1.3 times to twice as high as mobile web click-through in all surveyed Asia Pacific countries, the company said in a statement.
 
App advertising revenue surpassed the mobile web channel across most markets, by as much as 13 times in Singapore and Thailand. Only in India and Indonesia is revenue still higher from the mobile web, it added.
 
The countries covered in the report include Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
 
The report is based on Opera’s platform which reaches over 1.4 billion users and include quarterly trends, advertising best practices, and what’s new in mobile technology and creativity.
 
Opera Mediaworks said it examined data from hundreds of global ad campaigns and billions of impressions served on the platform, and combined it with some third-party data from external sources.
 
“Asia Pacific is a massive and growing market for app usage and app advertising,” said Vikas Gulati, Asia managing director Opera Mediaworks.
 
“It’s fascinating to see that some trends, such as high usage of gaming, are reflected across almost all Asia Pacific markets, despite the range of cultural, social and economic factors that vary between countries in our region,” he added.
 
More highlights from the report:
 
APAC users spend more time on apps
 
Games and broad-based entertainment categories (news, arts, music) are ‘must buy’ categories – or, as Opera Mediaworks likes to call it, ‘Today’s Premium’ – to drive TV-sized reach and is where large amounts of time spent occurs.
 
Looking at data from the top 100 apps that use Opera’s mobile ad platform to monetise their traffic, mobile users in Asia Pacific are spending about 46 minutes each in each of these popular apps – longer than the global average of 30 minutes.
 
The average session length of mobile users in Asia Pacific was 9.6 minutes, also longer than the global average of 8.5 minutes.
 
Games the top app category
 
The Games category has the highest number of ad impressions served on Opera Mediaworks’ mobile ad platform in Australia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
 
However, two markets showed differing results: India, where app usage is concentrated in the Music, Video and Media category; and Indonesia, where a tech-savvy youth market is driving high usage of Technology and Computing apps.
 

However, the ads on Game apps do not necessarily have the highest conversion rates nor enjoy the highest click-through rates.
 
Ads on Sports and Health & Fitness convert better than other categories in most Asia Pacific countries, except Australia where ads on Shopping convert the best.
 
Mobile SDKs are key for targeting
 
Technology can mean the difference between a poorly-targeted campaign and a highly accurate one, the report found.
 
Advertisers that work with a mobile ad platform – as opposed to directly with a media company – must be assured of direct SDK penetration in order to increase the likelihood of reaching highly targeted audiences, Opera Mediaworks argued.
 
Mobile ads SDKs (software development kits) dramatically improve the ad experience that goes beyond customer creative.
 
“It’s really about creating a trusted relationship between publisher and advertiser, which ultimately leads to greater opportunity for optimisation and better outcomes against advertiser KPIs (key performance indicators,” said Vikas.
 
Related Stories:
 
Video leads the way in mobile advertising growth: Report
 
Aiming to spark an advergames renaissance
 
Google ups the app ante, embraces iOS
 
 
For more technology news and the latest updates, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Like us on Facebook.