Millennial Media releases data for September mobile engagement
Millennial Media released its monthly SMART report about the engagement of mobile users with advertising supplied by the company.
Yet again, there is a drop in the average session time of how long people are spending using their mobile devices. Not sure what is causing this, but it isn’t good. Here is how the past few months have stacked up:
- June – 5 minutes, 38 seconds
- July – 5 minutes, 10 seconds
- August – 4 minutes, 59 seconds
- September 4 minutes, 46 seconds
That time is just getting tighter and tighter if you want to capture their attention and get them to click on one of your ads.
Here are the highlights from this month’s report.
- The U.S. Mobile Web now reaches 64.1M users; Millennial Media reaches 51.2M or 78.9% of the U.S. Mobile Web users
- Entertainment, an early innovator in mobile, remained the top vertical in Q3
- The CPG vertical jumped from sixth in Q2 to the fourth spot in Q3
- User session times decreased from 4:59 to 4:46 (minutes: seconds); however, average page views decreased from 111 to 109.
- Apple drove Samsung out of the top spot for device manufacturer
Reach: The U.S. Mobile Web now reaches 64.1M users, which offers an even greater opportunity for advertisers to reach and target mobile consumers as we enter Q4.
Special Q3 Section: Millennial Media’s Q3 Top 10 Mobile Advertising Verticals represented the same mix of verticals as in Q2 (see June SMART), with the exception of some small movements. The CPG vertical jumped to the fourth spot in Q3. The Consumer Electronics sub-vertical drove the majority of growth in Q3 for Retail.
Engagement: With no change into September, Traffic to Site was the primary destination for campaigns in Q3 and represented the destination for approximately 52% of campaigns. This data represents a growth in persistent mobile sites. Our largest month over month increase from the suite of Mydas Portfolio™ post-click actions was the AppStore/iTunes action. AppStore/iTunes made up 22% of post-click actions, a 6% increase. This is a true indicator of brands promoting their products and services via iPhone applications and including them as part of their overall mobile buys. The Subscribe/Purchase action had the largest percent of post-click actions, with 31% in September.
Targeting: Advertisers leveraged Millennial Media’s industry-leading reach, as indicated in Q3’s Campaign Targeting Mix. The broadest targeting methods, Run of Network (RON), Channel and Custom Subnet, dominated the mix in Q3. With an overall focus in volume-driven campaign goals, advertisers were interested in reaching a large audience. This was reflected in a 12% month over month increase in RON in Q3. Two highly targeted methods, Takeover and Audience, experienced the largest overall change and fluctuations in CPEU throughout Q3.
Device: Apple was the top device manufacturer for the first time this year, with 22.43% of the impression share in September. Apple had an impressive 2.65% increase month over month. Samsung moved to second place, with a 0.12% decrease in September; however, Samsung had six devices in the Top 20 Mobile Phones on our network and there were three BlackBerry devices in our Top 10—Curve, Pearl and Storm. Keypad overtook Touch Screen in the September Device Input Mix – Keypad represented 33.38% of the mix, while Touch Screen represented 31.82%.
Could Android be getting ready to capture a huge portion of the market?
We already told you about how Google’s Android operating system looked poised to be the second biggest in the market by 2012, and it appears that Google has taken that to heart.
During a conference call about Google’s third quarter earnings, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was exuberant about the future of Android according to TechCrunch. More precisely, Mr. Schmidt’s words were, “Android adoption is about to explode.”
The theory behind this is that Google has seen a 30 percent jump in the number of searches being conducted from mobile devices over the second quarter. With Android about to expand from its current 12 handsets world-wide, and being sold at a lower cost due to the open source nature of Android, Google should have a double win on its hands with people using its OS that much more and that many more people conducting searches.
When you add in that The Boy Genius Report has gotten its hands on Android 2.0 and posted numerous screenshots from the OS codenamed “Eclair”, you can see some great things are coming down the road for this operating system.
If you haven’t started developing for this platform yet … why haven’t you?
‘In App Purchase’ now available for all iPhone apps
According to MacRumors, Apple has sent out an email letting its registered developers know that they can now add “In App Purchase” options to their free apps.
Up until now, only apps that charge for a download could add this new feature, but it has now been opened up to the free app market as well. This could be a huge strategy changer for some developers, especially those in the games market. Should you continue to charge for a game, or should you give it away free to increase the userbase and heighten the odds of people purchasing in-game items that they can use to best their friends with. In other words: When is Mafia Wars-style games going to be showing up on the iPhone and iPod Touch?
Things could be about to get get very interesting in the world of iPhone app development.
Vodafone exploring new advertising styles for mobile devices
Vodafone, a leading cellular provider in Europe, is exploring taking current mobile advertising solutions to the next level.
According to an article from MobiAd, Vodafone feels the traditional banner style ads that are so popular on the Internet are not the optimal solution for advertising on mobile devices. While the company is not abandoning the traditional format, in fact they are trying to grow it, it wants to explore entirely new formats that will fit with the mobile space better.
John Kelly, Principal Manager for Vodafone Marketing Solutions, told MobiAd, “our emphasis will be on diversifying our offering away from a reliance on “internet style” banner advertising into formats that take advantage of and have a closer fit to the many unique properties of mobile.”
Two of the solutions they have launched so far are one in South Africa based around the habit of residents there calling someone and hanging up to tell them they would like the person to call them back. Vodafone launched a service called “Please Call Me” that tells the other party you would like them to call, and it also attaches an ad to the bottom of the message. In India the company discovered people take longer to answer their phone than in other markets, so they made it so you hear an ad as opposed to the ringing of the other phone. The latter was so successful that it is sold out months in advance and has also been ported to the German market.
While the call me service might be hard to integrate into mobile apps, the ads during call rings solution has been discussed by Google here in the United States already. You can almost hear the VoIP developers drooling over this concept.
Is iPhone App Store pricing a road to ruin?
Are you paving a road to oblivion with the prices you choose for your iPhone apps?
Gizmodo wrote up a very salient and in-depth article about the disparity of pricing for apps based on which platform they are released for. It makes some very pointed comments about how there seems to be a race to the bottom on the App Store, and how this may lead to increased sales for now, but it may be a road to ruin down the line.
If you are developing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it is a must read article, and far too long for any brief summary to do justice to it. If you haven’t already read it, it is a definite must read for you some time this week.
[Editor’s Note and Disclosure: Millennial Media is a sponsor of SiliconANGLE. –spa]
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