PubMatic Report on Mobile Advertising Demonstrates Strength of Video
As the mobile ad market continues to grow, advertisers should look to leverage in-app private marketplaces and video advertising, according to a report on mobile advertising trends by publisher-focused sell-side platform PubMatic.
In its second Quarterly Mobile Index of 2018, PubMatic found that mobile ad spend increased 25% year-over-year in Q2. But after nearly a decade of growth, rates could begin to slow down as the mobile ad market is expected to exceed $180 billion this year, said Paulina Klimenko, senior vice president of corporate and business development at PubMatic.
“The larger the market, the harder it is for growth rates to remain high—although absolute dollar value growth will likely remain on an upward trend in the foreseeable future,” she wrote in an email to Street Fight.
Within mobile, PubMatic expects to see mobile in-app short form and over-the-top video, such as Netflix-like subscription services, offer the most promising growth.
Just look to the report’s numbers for proof of this trend.
“We saw the overall mobile ad spend growth rate of 25% year-over-year through the PubMatic platform in Q2 2018, compared to mobile video ad spend expanding more than 200% during the same period,” Klimenko wrote.
PubMatic sees 12 trillion advertiser bids flow through its platform each month. The company’s in-house data team analyzed these bids, impressions, and revenue to identify trends in the industry in the second quarter of 2018, from April through June.
In its analysis, PubMatic also found that advertisers had increased their ad budgets for mobile, using more private marketplaces to improve return on investment and add another layer of protection from ad fraud by choosing to appear in high-quality apps.
Private marketplaces allow marketers to target audiences based on options such as geo-location data and contextual targeting, which can increase personalization and increase return on investment, Klimenko wrote.
These trends follow a continued pull from desktop video to mobile and to apps in particular. The portion of digital video ad spend devoted to handheld devices nearly tripled between 2017 and 2018. Apple devices tended to see more growth than Android.
And over the last year, mobile ad spend increased 239%—including 688% year-over-year via app, versus 73% in mobile web.
The report also highlights the exploding market of mobile advertising in South East Asia, Indonesia, and Japan. As more of these countries’ consumers purchase smartphones and tablets, local and multinational advertisers may look to find rapid growth in those markets.
The Asia-Pacific region’s growth rapidly outpaces other markets along certain metrics, according to the report. While the European market saw no growth in monetized mobile ad impression volume, in part due to the launch of the GDRP, the Asia-Pacific region saw a 168% year-over-year change, according to the report.
Kate Talerico is a staff writer at Street Fight.
