Consumer packaged good brands and automakers are averaging some of the highest click-through and engagement rates in the industry by focusing on engagement rather than conversions, according to a new report from DG Mediamind.

On the reverse side, the report suggests that direct response verticals such as travel are having a tougher time with mobile advertising because of the cookie limitations in tracking a big-ticket purchase such as a hotel booking. DG MediaMind?s new Mobile Benchmarks report is based on more than 2 billion mobile advertising impressions that were delivered across more than 1,000 campaigns in 2013. 

?The people that were getting the most time spent were definitely auto and CPG,? said David Scatterday, senior product marketing  manager for mobile, social and second screen at DG MediaMind, New York.

?These are more for branding objectives and people whose objectives are brand recall or time spent,? he said. ?Especially CPG, but even auto, had pretty consistent use of dynamic creative, so the messaging in Dallas would probably be different than the messaging in New York, so you?re tailoring the call-to-action and messaging can be as useful to that consumer as possible.?

Getting rich media right
Three different types of banners were measured in the report: standard banners, polite banners and expandable banners.

Standard banner ads include only an image that drives to a landing page. 

Polite banners are a rich media ad unit that can be any size, but does not expand when clicked on. These ads always load after a publisher?s content completely loads.

Expandable banner ads spread across the screen when clicked on and can include multiple panels and interactions.

One of the key findings in Mediamind?s report centers on interaction rates, which measure the number of interactions and time that consumers are spending within a mobile advertising campaign.

According to Mediamind?s report, expandable ads generate a 59.5 percent interaction rate. To compare, pilot banners rake in a 1.98 percent, and interaction rates with standard banners cannot be measured since the ads drive to a single URL.

Automotive advertisers surveyed by Mediamind generated a 20.7 percent interaction rate, and CPG brands generated an 11.7 percent interaction rate.

Electronics and entertainment brands also generated interaction rates at 7.9 percent and 5 percent.

Automotive brands lead the pack in industries driving interaction rates because these advertisers pack images and video galleries into their ads to feature a specific vehicle. Mapping and click-to-call features were also commonly used.

CPG brands on the other hand are advertisers that most consistently combined several rich media features into a single unit to boost interaction.

CPG brands also use brand awareness as a key campaign objective. These marketers were able to increase engagement rates within the ad units themselves by including images, social media and video.

Additionally, CPG brands incorporate coupons to entice consumers to click on ads.

When it comes to industry verticals that are getting expandable ads right, entertainment, electronics and automotive lead the pack.

Entertainment brands generated an average user expansion of 9 percent, electronics companies reached 8.9 percent and automotive brands pulled in a 5.5 percent user expansion rate.

Driving click-through rates
According to the report, click-through rate performance for mobile expandable banners reach 0.63 percent versus polite banners? 0.28 percent. Standard banner ads examined generated a 0.09 percent CTR.

By industry, retail and electronics brands are top verticals in driving CTR.

Retailers generated a 0.52 percent CTR, and electronics brands generated a 0.41 percent CTR.

Additionally, CPG brands generate a 0.31 CTR, and auto brands rake in a 0.22 percent CTR.

When it comes to brands that are not benefiting from mobile advertising as much, direct response are having a tougher time getting mobile right since the conversions on mobile ads are not significant.

For example, travel brands ranked the lowest with a 0.13 percent CTR. Since travel tickets are typically bigger purchases for many consumers it is not surprising that campaigns are not successful in driving bookings.

Instead, many of these travel brands are focusing on driving app downloads, which can then likely be tied to an account to track a consumer?s activity.

?A lot of verticals that end up being performance-driven or direct response like travel didn?t do so well because in a lot of cases, there are still cookie limitations,? Mr. Scatterday said. 

?They would end up going to the landing page on the actual desktop page, which we see a lot of drop-off on click-throughs,? he said. ?They would leave the ad immediately to go to the page because [the advertisers?] objectives were always about things like trip bookings or app downloads.

?Some of the laggards [overall] did not spend as much time in terms of branding and thinking about what works best with consumers.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York