Smaato highlights key role of emerging markets in mobile advertising

Source: Smaato.

Smaato, the global real-time advertising platform for mobile publishers and app developers, has released its Q315 Global Trends in Mobile Programmatic Report. Smaato analysed data from billions of mobile ad impressions served on its exchange during the third quarter of 2015 to reveal massive growth in Asia Pacific. Indonesia grew by 84% in the third quarter, outlining the next frontier of mobile advertising for publishers and advertisers in Asia Pacific.

While the strongest regions on the Smaato platform remain those with highly-developed mobile, advertising and commerce infrastructures and those with large populations and a mobile-first mentality such as India, Asia Pacific is new to the list of leading regions. This comes as a result of rapidly developing mobile networks and a proliferation of smartphones, which have combined to create a wealth of opportunities for mobile publishers and advertisers on the Smaato platform.

“As the world gets more connected, it’s never been more crucial to go global with your mobile advertising strategy,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “India, with its massive, mobile-first population, has long been considered the ‘next big market.’ While India remains a growing powerhouse, our data also shows that countries like Indonesia and Brazil are up-and-coming markets in Latin America and Asia Pacific - and offer incredible opportunities for publishers to monetise, and for advertisers to connect with consumers.”

This past quarter, Smaato found a subtle year-over-year shift in Q3 away from the mobile web in favour of apps. This shift could come as a result of publishers directing users to apps to avoid ad-blocking software, which is primarily a mobile web issue. Additional findings in the report include:

The operating system with the strongest growth continues to be Android, with supply and spending soaring by 67% during Q315 from the year before.

Larger ad formats result in higher eCPM (cost per 1,000 clicks). While traditional banners (320x50) are still growing, their rate of growth is dropping in favor of larger sizes like the medium rectangle (300x250) - up 85% - and the interstitial ad (320x480) - which grew 77%.

Rich media continues to generate higher and higher revenues for publishers and app developers - now generating 116% higher revenues than image-based ads.

Smaato serves up to 6 billion ads each day, across 800 million unique monthly mobile users around the world, and works with 90,000 mobile app developers and publishers. The Global Trends in Mobile Programmatic Report reflects the detailed activity and trends that have developed over the third quarter of 2015 across Smaato’s broad, global base of publishers, advertisers and users.

Interested?

Download the report

China's RTB ad spending grew 616% QoQ in Q214

Smaato, a mobile real-time bidding (RTB) ad exchange (SMX) and supply side platform (SSP), has highlighted the continued growth of mobile RTB in 2014 through its global mobile RTB Insights Report for Q2 2014*. 

Source: The Smaato RTB Insights Report for Q2 2014.
RTB spending in the APAC region for the top five countries. 

Smaato found that RTB spend grew 69% in Q2 2014, compared to Q1 2014. This quarter also saw a 456% increase in mobile RTB spending over the same quarter last year.

And while entertainment and media remain one of the top advertising categories, with 24% of the overall revenue share, the food and retail category grew from 8% in Q1 2014 to 25% in Q2, overtaking entertainment and media as the top category with the highest spend from advertisers. 

A similar up-and-comer was found in China, where RTB spend grew more than any other individual region. Compared to Q1 2014, RTB ad spend in China rose by 616% in Q2 2014. While the United States still reigns supreme with 65% of the global RTB spend coming from the nation, emerging countries like Indonesia and Thailand are following in China’s footsteps with very significant quarter-to-quarter jumps, proving that RTB advertising spend is growing fast worldwide.

“Brands are embracing RTB as a source for premium inventory,” said Smaato CEO Ragnar Kruse. “With programmatic advertising spend from new sectors like consumer packaged goods (CPG) and regions like China rapidly increasing, mobile ad spend is seeing a phenomenal growth, and that growth trend will continue in the foreseeable future.”

Click here to download the full report. 

*The report is an analysis of worldwide exchange data, auctions, bids and impressions across Smaato’s SMX platform. Smaato’s SMX platform serves 90 billion+ ad impressions per month to over 450 million unique visitors in the US, EMEA and APAC regions.

The more targeted the mobile advertisement, the more it earns

Smaato has found that in China, the advertising is most successful in the shopping, e-commerce, communication and technology categories, which boasted eCPM* highs of US$0.30 in Q1. 

In terms of mobile real-time bidding (RTB) ad spend, entertainment (30%) and games (22%) emerged as the top two categories in the country for the first quarter.

Smaato Chief Strategy Officer Ajitpal Pannu shared that monetisation and brand spend were driven higher when key parameters were passed globally to advertising partners.
 
eCPMs increased by up to 321% when location and device ID are included in a bid request, and increased more than 150% when gender and age range data were included.

According to Gartner**, global mobile advertising spending is forecast to reach US$18 billion in 2014, up from an estimated US$13.1 billion in 2013. Asia Pacific markets  have been generally receptive to mobile advertising – nine in 10 of smartphone users in China and 87% of smartphone owners in India have clicked on mobile advertisements in December 2013***. 

Source: Smaato Ad Exchange Global Mobile RTB Insights Q1 2014

*eCPM is a performance measure for advertisements that is calculated by dividing total earnings by the total number of impressions, multiplied by 1,000. 

**Gartner says mobile advertising spending will reach $18 Billion in 2014, January 21 2014

***The Asian Mobile Consumer Decoded

Mobile real time bidding (RTB) takes centrestage in Asia Pacific region

While the US continues to lead in real-time bidding (RTB) advertising expenditure, the highest regional RTB ad spend in the APAC region is in Australia (35%), India (29%), Indonesia (16%), Thailand (12%) and Japan (8%), reports  Smaato, a global mobile RTB ad exchange (SMX) and supply side platform (SSP).
 
These results were reported in the Smaato RTB Insights Report for Q1 2014, which analyses worldwide exchange data, auctions, bids and impressions across Smaato’s SMX platform.  

Some of its key findings are:

More advertisers and publishers are leveraging programmatic buying RTB ad spend continues to grow in 2014 and shows an increased advertiser interest in mobile programmatic buying. The aggregated RTB performance on SMX experienced a significant growth in Q1 2014 with uplift of 459% compared to Q1 2013.

Top five markets in Asia Pacific for RTB ad spend

Countries	Contribution to mobile ad spend*	Auction uplift** (from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014)
Australia	35%	112%
India	29%	208%
Indonesia	16%	170%
Thailand	12%	69%
Japan	8%	85%

Windows Phone OS supply inventory is ramping up in Q1 2014 The Windows Phone OS RTB market share experienced a worldwide increase of 75% compared to Q4 2013. It now accounts for 15% of the global RTB market share, behind the top OS Android (34%) and iOS (23%). The highest regional uplift of Windows Phone OS market share was in the APAC region with 506% growth compared to Q4 2013.

Entertainment and Technology were the top spending advertiser categories
Entertainment and media still generate highest RTB ad spend with 37% of the total pie, followed by technology and telecom (24%) and business and finance (11%). 

Source: Smaato. Global top spending advertising categories Q1, (Source: SMX Platform)

“As we unveil the results of our newest report, it is great to see the continued growth of RTB ad spend in particular, as we have asserted that RTB has played a significant role in growing mobile advertising on the whole,” said Smaato CEO Ragnar Kruse.

Smaato’s SMX platform helps 76,000+ publishers monetise their inventory across 240+ ad networks and demand side platforms. Click here to download the full report. 

*Percentages of the total ad spend for these five markets.

**Auction uplift refers to the percentage increase in the number of auctions over the specified period.