Mobile apps overtaking mobile web in Asia Pacific
A latest study has found that in-app advertising is overtaking the mobile web channel across almost all Asia Pacific markets.
The study, titled Mobile First Insights (MFI) in the APAC region, has been carried out by Opera Mediaworks, a large mobile advertising and marketing platform. The survey has been carried out in Australia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
It was found in the survey that Click-through on apps was found to be between 1.3 times to twice as high as mobile web click-through in all surveyed APAC markets.
App advertising revenue surpassed the mobile web channel across most APAC markets, by as much as 13 times in Singapore and Thailand. Only in India and Indonesia is revenue still higher from mobile web, Opera Mediaworks said in a press statement Thursday.
“Asia Pacific is a massive and growing market for app usage and app advertising,” said Vikas Gulati, Managing Director, Asia at Opera Mediaworks.
“It’s fascinating to see that some trends, such as high usage of gaming, are reflected across almost all Asia Pacific markets, despite the range of cultural, social and economic factors that vary between countries in our region. We hope this new report will serve the needs of brands, agencies and publishers alike, and that it will be something that they look forward to every quarter because of the invaluable insights and category best practices that can be applied to their business,” he added.
Mediaworks said the survey is aimed at helping marketers navigate the fast-changing mobile environment and make strategic decisions that will drive real outcomes for their business.
Games and broad-based entertainment categories (news, arts, music) are “must buy” categories – or “Today’s Premium” – to drive TV-sized reach and is where large amounts of time spent occurs, the survey report from Mediaworks sadi.
“Looking at data from the top 100 apps that use Opera’s mobile ad platform to monetize their traffic, we saw that mobile users in Asia Pacific are spending about 46 minutes each in each of these popular apps – longer than the global average of 30 minutes. The average session length of mobile users in Asia Pacific was 9.6 minutes, also longer than the global average of 8.5 minutes,” Mediaworks announced in the statement.
The Games category has the highest number of ad impressions served on Opera Mediaworks’ mobile ad platform in Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. However, two markets showed differing results: India, where app usage is concentrated in the category of Music, Video and Media; and Indonesia, where a tech-savvy youth market is driving high usage of Technology and Computing apps, the statement added.
However, the ads on Game apps do not necessarily have the highest conversion rates nor enjoy the highest click-through rates. Ads on Sports and Health & Fitness convert better than other categories in most APAC countries, except Australia where ads on Shopping convert the best, the report said.
Technology can mean the difference between a poorly-targeted campaign and a highly accurate one, the report found. Advertisers that work with a mobile ad platform – as opposed to directly with a media company – must be assured of direct SDK penetration in order to increase the likelihood of reaching highly targeted audiences, it added.
The report shares two mobile advertising campaigns that are prime examples of purpose-built creative, that is, creative solely made for mobile, which often leverages the native hardware and software capabilities that are built into mobile devices.
