Rich media mobile ads are four times as effective as banner ads: report
It stands to reason then that Opera also reports that rich media ads are becoming more popular with advertisers.
The data is aggregated from 378 mobile ad campaigns run in the US during the month of May, each with more than one million impressions.
But a separate study from Nielsen shows that mobile advertising is still struggling to make an impact with consumers, as more than half (53%) of UK smartphone owners say they have never received adverts while using their device.
This either suggests that it is an underused marketing channel or consumers find it easy to ignore mobile advertising.
Use of mobile ads
But while rich media ads are clearly more effective than banner ads, the latter still dominates the mobile ad market.
Standard banner ads (350×50) account for just over half (52%) of mobile ad campaigns on Opera’s platform, with the second most-popular format being MREC (300×250) with just 16% of market share. Tap to expand and interactive videos make up just 6% and 1% respectively.
Apple dominates mobile advertising
Despite the fact that Android is leading the way in terms of global smartphone sales, iOS devices still account for a higher proportion of ad impressions and revenue.
Overall Apple products account for 44% of impressions and almost half of mobile ad revenue, however when looking solely at smartphones that use iOS and Android then the two operating systems are tied with just over 30% of ad impressions each.
The iPhone still triumphs in terms of monetisation however, with 36.4% of revenue compared to 27.8% for Android.
