Running a mobile advertising campaign to generate application downloads continues to be a tactic for marketers looking to increase engagement, according to a new study from Millennial Media.

In addition to app downloads, Millennial Media?s new Smart report also finds that marketing budgets allocated to mobile have increased year-over-year and are also pursing more audience targeting than content targeting. The report also looks at the growth that different industry verticals have seen over the past year.

?The growth of mobile advertising has been boosted by the huge variety of verticals investing in the space,? said Mack McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD.

?From Q1 2011 to Q1 2012, five different verticals grew more than 100 percent on our platform, including verticals like CPG, which has been a staple in our top ten and grew from an already established base,? she said.

Mobile growth?
In addition to CPGs, the Millennial Media report also finds that the sports, news, travel and health, fitness and wellness verticals all grew as well.

The highest year-over-year spend comes from sports with a whopping 285 percent year-over-year growth.

News takes the No. 2 slot with a 261 percent year-over-year growth, and travel represents a 200 percent increase.

Other top verticals include telecommunications, finance, retail and restaurants, entertainment and education.

The study also looks at the automotive industry and how consumers who were interested in buying a car were targeted. For instance, 23 percent of in-market users were interested in a luxury vehicle and 19 percent were interested in a SUV or MVP vehicle, showing the opportunities available to marketers to target one specific group of users.

Post-click engagement?
Twenty-one percent of mobile-only Millennial Media campaigns included a social media interaction, which points to the growing need for social media to be engrained in all mobile initiatives.

Nine percent of mobile-only campaigns included a click-to-call feature, and seven percent incorporated a mobile commerce option.

Mobile video accounted for 18 percent of post-click features, which is one way that the entertainment industry has been eager to tap into mobile advertising. Additionally, mobile video views grew 958 percent from the second quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012.

The study also took a look at top smartphone and tablet devices.

Smartphones make up 73 percent of the device mix impressions with feature phones representing seven percent.

When it comes to operating system, Android leads the pack with 49 percent of impressions. IOS devices make up 33 percent of impressions, BlackBerry makes up 14 percent and Windows and Symbian devices making up four percent of impressions.

Connected devices that are not a phone make up 20 percent of device impressions.

The top tablets by impression are Apple?s iPad, followed by Samsung?s Galaxy Tab, Amazon?s Kindle Fire, Motorola?s Xoom and the BlackBerry Playbook.

When it comes to app downloads, marketers of all kinds are using mobile to boost downloads.

For instance, the travel industry was one of the top verticals with apps that let users book travel plans via their handsets. Additionally, the entertainment vertical uses campaigns to increase the number of branded apps with video features.

Top app categories include games, music and entertainment, mobile social media, communications, productivity and tools, weather and health and fitness.

?Forty-two percent of all campaigns on our platform in Q1 gave consumers the option to download an app as a post-click action,? Ms. McKelvey said.

?This included developers and performance advertisers, but also included brand advertisers who have dedicated resources to creating a unique mobile experience for their core consumers,? she said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York