Mobile ad spend trends: Industry moves towards higher quality inventory

Advertisers are seeking higher quality mobile placements to target holiday shoppers, with a 45% rise increase in weekly ‘Private Marketplaces’ (PMP) volume before Black Friday, according to new research.

The findings, from ad tech firm Pubmatic, found that advertisers are directing spending to higher-quality inventory, especially through more transparent mobile private marketplaces (PMPs).

Industry leading stakeholders are eradicating suspect impressions on a global level and, as a result of this industry shift to quality, premium publishers are garnering higher prices for their inventory and attracting more mobile ad spend, effectively closing the mobile gap between mobile ad spending and mobile media consumption.

The report outlined 5 key findings:

1. Advertiser demand shifts towards higher-quality mobile PMP inventory to target mobile-obsessed holiday shoppers. Advertisers increasingly sought higher-quality mobile inventory to target holiday shoppers on mobile devices, as evidenced by mobile private marketplace volume spikes.

2. By vertical, retail and technology spending drove PMP growth. Within mobile private marketplaces, the retail and technology verticals showed major volume gains ahead of Black Friday shopping, demonstrating that e-commerce and consumer technology sales likely drove ad spending.

3. Opportunity for mobile growth remains strong on a global scale. The Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) represented the largest opportunities in terms of volume, but the Asia Pacific (APAC) region was the fastest-growing mobile opportunity.

4. The Android app ad awakens. Android app ads increased the most in terms of both price and volume, while CPMS increased across all mobile platforms, including IOS app, mobile web and tablet web.

5. Mobile gap remains closed. Mobile CPMs are still higher than desktop CPMs, and both mobile and desktop CPMs grew a healthy 36% year-over-year.

PubMatic’s Q4 2015 QMI report demonstrates that major brand advertisers looking to target mobile consumers with timely, relevant advertising messages are increasingly utilising mobile private marketplaces (PMP)—which was the case during the 2015 holiday shopping season.
While consumers picked up their smartphones and tablets to research and purchase holiday gifts, weekly mobile PMP monetized impression volume increased 45 percent from the start of the quarter through the week of Black Friday (Nov. 27).

In the retail and technology sectors, the increase in weekly PMP volume over that period was even higher, at 106% and 285%, respectively. The market opportunity in PMPs is significant, as eMarketer estimates that ad spending on PMPs in the U.S. will reach $3.65 billion this year, up from just $80 million in 2013. Globally, MAGNA GLOBAL projects that programmatic spending, which includes open auction, PMP and automated guaranteed, will rise to $37 billion by 2019.

Looking ahead, the volume spikes in mobile PMP during Black Friday and Cyber Monday suggest similar rises in mobile ad prices and spending around this year’s landmark events, including the 2016 presidential election and key professional sporting events. Agencies looking to effectively execute on their advertiser clients’ strategic plans around major events will likely continue to utilise PMPs for the simplified buying environment and premium inventory.

“Our data shows that the shifting industry focus to high-quality ad inventory is paying off for premium publishers,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. “As low quality inventory is cleared out of the ecosystem, publishers are receiving higher CPMs. Publishers are also focused on creating higher-quality media experiences for consumers to combat ad blocking and encourage more media consumption, which also contributes to higher CPMs and attracts more ad spending from brand advertisers. We’re seeing that private marketplaces also enable timely and scalable targeting of specific audiences. 2016 brings several major events, such as the presidential election and the Summer Olympics, which present immense opportunities for publishers and advertisers trying to reach mobile audiences with relevant marketing messages.”

To view the full Q4 2015 Quarterly Mobile Index (QMI) report, click here.

QMI Methodology

PubMatic’s yield and data analytics team analyses billions of impressions on a daily basis, utilising the company’s best-in-class analytics capabilities. The Q4 2015 QMI incorporates impression, revenue and CPM data from these daily reports to provide a high-level glimpse of key trends within the mobile advertising industry. Data is from calendar year Q4 2015, i.e. October 1, 2015 through December 31, 2015. “Monetized impressions” are defined as impressions that were sold through the PubMatic platform, and “CPM” is defined as the cost per one thousand monetized impressions.