Opera Mediaworks, an Opera Software company, today published its Q4 State of the Mobile Advertising report, sharing key mobile advertising data and trends from the last quarter of 2012. The source of the data is the company’s extensive mobile advertising platform, which serves 50+ billion ad impressions per month via 12,000 mobile sites and apps, delivering a total of $400 million in revenue to mobile publishers in 2012.
The report showed that:
- Q4 was a record quarter. The fourth quarter represented more than a two-times increase in impressions and revenue to publishers compared to any other quarter in 2012. This reflects the magnitude of marketing and advertising spend during this quarter, associated with the seasonal impact of holiday shopping.
- Android is on the rise, influenced by the adoption of the Samsung Galaxy S III. The iOS platform is still on top for monetization, but Android smartphones edged out the iPhone by about two percentage points for market share of global impression volume.
- Music, Video and Media is the top category for impressions. Consumers are using their mobile devices more and more for consumption of music, video and media, taking 21.4% of all impressions. Arts & Entertainment proved to be more valuable to publishers, generating slightly more revenue overall.
- North American mobile ad dominance shrinks as global players emerge. From Q3 to Q4, the number of ad requests from North America went from 70% of the global total to 64% due to the growth of international traffic. In particular, the Russian Federation has emerged with significant growth in ad requests (60%) from the beginning of Q2 to the end of Q4 last year, largely due to adoption of Android devices.
The report also finds that the sophisticated features now found on mobile devices allow for high-impact, rich media campaigns. Using examples from DreamWorks Animation and Kraft Foods, Opera demonstrates how brands are able to combine new types of ad units, branded content and embedded calls to action to create an engaging narrative on their customers’ smartphones.
Android phones accounted for over 31 percent while iphones had 29 percent of the total 500 million mobile ad impressions across more than twelve thousand mobile website and apps. However taking into account other Apple devices like ipads and ipod touches, Apple stil had the largest share of ad impressions at 41 percent.
