Mobile ads work well in apps

Warc, 1 September 2014

NEW YORK: The click-through-rate (CTR) for ads on mobile apps is twice as high as the rate for desktop web ads, according to new analysis of tracked activity.

Based on some 300bn data points from mobile ad campaigns in the first half of this year, mobile ad measurement platform Medialets concluded that ads on apps achieved 0.58% CTR compared with 0.23% on the mobile web.

Ads on tablets attracted 44% higher CTR than those on handsets, while travel and entertainment ads did especially well after achieving roughly 60% higher CTR than ads for retail and other categories, Forbes reported.

Elsewhere, Medialets found over 80% of users will watch at least the first three-quarters of a video ad, but only a third will finish watching, meaning that an advertiser's main message or call to action needs to be placed early in a video ad.

And ad impressions from mobile ad exchanges and demand-side platforms (DSPs) that arrange real-time placement of ads grew by as much as 500% in the second quarter from the first quarter of this year, the report found.

That said, ads run by exchanges and DSPs weren't always the most effective, Medialets said.

The CTR on ads placed directly by publishers and ad networks were 0.47% and 0.6% respectively, while DSP ads achieved only 0.3% CTR and exchanges just 0.11%.

Medialets concluded that mobile ads work better than many in the industry sometimes assume, because they secure clicks as well as conversions.

"Mobile ads actually do work," said Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets. "People will do almost everything on their phone that they do on their desktop."

Data sourced from Forbes; additional content by Warc staff