The Insightful Media Series – Mobile RTB

Friday 17th May, 2013

The Insightful Media Series – Mobile RTB

 

Background

RTB or real time bidding involves machine based or programmatic buying whereby digital advertising placement opportunities are auctioned off in real time. These auctions, as its name suggest, take place in milliseconds with advertisers competing for the right to show you an ad when you are on a web page or on an app.  

 

The holy grail, as with all marketing, involves reaching a prospect with the right ad at the right time, in the right place. With RTB, this holy trinity is now much more of a reality than a pipe dream. With mobile RTB, the location factor gives it a decisive edge relative to desktop RTB.

Growth

A number of studies have been released in recent times which point to a big upswing in mobile RTB and some of the most revealing commentaries are from the following companies;

Celtra, estimated that the size of the RTB market in mobile is about 10%, but expected it to reach 30% in 2013.

Adfonic: Mobile ad–buying platform Adfonic reported that in Q1 2012 mobile RTB ads accounted for only 8% of ads served on its network worldwide but by Q4 2012, the mobile RTB market had grown to 64% of total mobile ad requests.

Nexage: A mobile ad exchange, it reported that RTB more than doubled its share of revenue on the platform between May and October of last year. RTB’s revenue share grew 37% every month.

MoPub: A mobile ad exchange, it reported that the number of winning RTB auctions increased 162% over the third quarter of 2012. 

 

In addition to more auctions taking place, there are more bids being placed on each RTB-mediated ad request, a metric sometimes referred to as “bid depth.”

Tablets, according to Accordant Media are responsible for almost half of all mobile RTB requests. This underscores the popularity of tablets for advertising, particularly when you consider that there are far fewer tablets than there are smartphones.

ABI Research puts this into context when it estimated in January 2013 that there were 268 million tablet users worldwide, compared to 1.4 billion smartphone users.

The growth in smartphone and tablet devices has come at the expense of desktop with IDC reporting in April that shipments of desktops and laptops fell 14% in the first quarter of 2013, compared to a year earlier.

 

 

Mobile RTB Dynamics

In a recent E-Marketer report, in-app advertising accounted for the bulk of mobile RTB ads, at 93% of ads viewed. In-browser accounted for the remaining 7%.

AdExchanger, in their third quarterly mobile roundup concluded that the three primary drivers responsible for the big increase in Mobile RTB spend were rich media, targeting and the rise of tablets. This is all happening within the context of a growing mobile ad market as advertisers are following audiences as they devote more time to smartphones and tablets.

MoPub, in its Marketplace Report Q1 2013, reported that both CPMs and CTRs were higher for rich media ads with CPMs 68.6% higher and CTRs 50.6% higher. It observed that it’s the combination of clever technology and great creative that will accelerate mobile RTB’s adoption.

The greater creative canvas with tablet has led to more interesting rich media opportunities. This allied to the particular mode of consumption with tablet – one that is more lean back, leisure and entertainment oriented – is precisely what will create better opportunities for deeper engagement.

Verve Mobile released a report showing how location-targeting can improve ad performance. The results confirmed that location-targeted ads were higher than the industry average of 0.4%, with geo-aware targeted ads on its platform reaching a 1.0% CTR on average.

 

 

One Potential Hurdle…

There is one technological hurdle however which should be mentioned which has the potential to put the brakes on mobile RTB.

This limitation prevents the type of targeting and tracking which is commonplace with display RTB to take place via smartphones and tablets.

This hurdle is the lack of a universal cookie. Without a way of identifying users, the potential for retargeting or lookalike modeling is severely hampered.

There are various fingerprinting alternatives but as yet there doesn’t appear to be a commonly accepted approach.

 

To discuss Mobile RTB options with Insightful Media, contact Lee on (01) 703 0406 or email lee@insightfulmedia.ie

 

For further reading, we’d suggest you look at;

 

Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-real-time-bidding-ad-ecosystem-2013-5#ixzz2TYdR74JJ

Read more:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Tablets-Grab-Nearly-Half-of-Mobile-RTB-Share-Worldwide/1009860#ikxPvhTuMqlRQrMj.99

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *