Advertisers continued to grow their mobile presence in July: Study
August 25, 2009
Mack McKelvey is vice president of marketing at Millennial Media
The U.S. mobile Web grew 2.17 percent month over month to 61.1 million users and Millennial Media's unique audience reach increased to 45.6 million users or 75 percent of the U.S. mobile Web, according to the company's July Smart Report.
The report also found that campaigns sending traffic to their persistent mobile sites, as a campaign destination in July, increased 12.44 percent. Also, During July, the only full month of summer, advertisers ran broader-targeted campaigns, which decreased cost per engaged user rates.
In July, evidence of a mobile summer seasonal trend emerged," said Mack McKelvey, vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore. "In our May Smart (see www.millennialmedia.com/research), we reported a large lift in network traffic, a decline in WiFi traffic, and spikes in interaction rates across key verticals such as travel and auto.
"From our network analysis, it was clearly a Mobile Memorial Day, and advertisers that pre-planned and creatively targeted reaped the most rewards from this mobile weekend," she said. "Traffic and interaction rates did not follow this trend throughout the weekend of July 4."
"We attribute the extremely strong, consistent network traffic and interaction rates throughout July to the seasonality that online typically experiences during the summer. It was a heavy mobile search weekend, but outside of the portals, advertisers across the top verticals broadly targeted consumers likely to capitalize on branding opportunities prior to the third and fourth quarter heavy retail periods."
July's broader reaching mobile ad strategies closed the gap between the top two targeting mixes: Channel was up 6 percent and custom subnet down 11 percent.
Also 57 percent of campaigns used frequency capping in July, 9 percent more campaigns than June.
This dramatic increase showed that as advertisers opted for broader reach, they also wanted to avoid brand burn-out with their targeted consumers.
Mobile users clicked through more pages (106 from 99) in shorter sessions (5 minutes: 10 seconds average user session versus 5 minutes: 38 seconds in June).
"Advertisers continued to grow their mobile presence in July," Ms. McKelvey said. "By sending consumers to an evergreen mobile site allowed advertisers to build brand awareness and consumer engagement on a consistent basis in July."
Apple's iPhone continued to dominate the top devices category with a 12.21 percent share, a 3.62 percent increase over June.
Additionally, iPhone/iPod touch impressions increased 29 percent across the network in July.
Apple continued to close the gap but Samsung remained the top device manufacturer in July.
Two new mobile devices entered the top 20 in July -- the LG enV2 and the Samsung SCH-U410.
"The average session time per user decreased from 5:38 (five minutes and thirty eight seconds) to 5:10, while the average number of monthly page views increased from 99 to 106," Ms. McKelvey said. "This was a critical takeaway for advertisers, as mobile consumers engaged with more information, in less time.
"Broad-based targeting and consistent brand messages, coupled with frequency capping to prevent brand exhaustion was key for advertisers last month," she said.