Finance sector�s mobile ad spend up more than 1,000pc: Millennial Media

August 15, 2011

Mobile advertising spend is up across sectors

The finance sector increased its spend on mobile during the second quarter of 2011 by 1,095 percent, according to a new report by Millennial Media.

Millennial Media�s S.M.A.R.T. report for the second quarter reviewed campaigns across its network from leading mobile advertisers while also taking a look back to compare where mobile advertising was two years ago with where it is today. The numbers suggest that more advertisers are moving out of the test phase of mobile and starting to make a consistent investment in mobile.

�The mobile space has simply grown astronomically,� said Mack McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD.

�In terms of number of advertisers, the type of advertisers, mobile ad spend, and much more, the entire ecosystem has grown,� she said.

�In a more granular sense, a big change we have seen is that mobile has evolved to become more sophisticated. Advertisers are now creating campaigns that implement a wide variety of post-click actions, use different targeting methods, and send consumers to different destinations.�

Targeting on the rise
In addition to the jump in spend from the finance sector, the retail sector increased its spend on mobile by 956 percent during the second quarter compared with the second quarter of 2010. The increase was 426 percent for pharmaceuticals, 236 percent for automotive, 234 percent for entertainment and 145 percent for travel.

The leading U.S. verticals by mobile advertising spend are retail and restaurants, telecommunications, finance, entertainment and automotive.

The report also shows that marketers have increased their use of targeted audience reach methods in the past two years.

Demographic audience targeting grew from 1 percent of all campaigns in March of 2009 to 19 percent in the second quarter of this year. Local market targeting grew from 1 percent to 20 percent over the same period.

Application downloads represented 23 percent of the campaign destination mix in the second quarter, growing 9 percent from the previous quarter.

The most popular campaign destination was traffic to site, at 52 percent. Custom landing page came in second with 25 percent.

In terms of post-click campaign actions, viewing a map grew 28 percent from the previous quarter as advertisers in automotive and telecom used mobile to drive customers to dealerships and retail outlets.

Retail promotion as a post-click action experienced a 20 percent increase while mobile social grew 5 percent from the previous quarter.

Travel experienced a 57 percent growth from the previous quarter in application impressions as the use of applications related to air travel and mass transportation grew.

Mobile goals
In terms of the goals for their mobile advertising efforts, brand advertisers increasingly used mobile to drive brand awareness and used mobile video advertising as a tool to achieve this goal. The number of campaigns which focused on driving awareness grew from 9 percent in the first quarter to 14 percent in the second quarter.

The most popular goals were sustained in-market presence and lead generations, both with 28 percent. Product launches followed at 17 percent.

�While brands are certainly using mobile to drive awareness, the real takeaway when looking at the chart of advertiser campaign goals is the incredible variety we�re seeing,� Ms. McKelvey said.

�Brand awareness is huge, but so are product launches, lead generation and driving foot traffic,� she said.

�In fact, no one campaign goal has more than a 30 percent share on our network -- this speaks to the versatility of mobile and is another example of why many advertisers are so excited about the space.�

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York