U.S. Share Of Mobile Ad Impressions Dips Below 50% On Worldwide Surge, Opera Finds

Opera Mediaworks today released its State of Mobile Advertising Report for Q2 2013, and the news from the largest mobile ad platform is that mobile ad impressions are growing globally, with U.S. share dipping to below 50 percent, though American impressions still account for just under 75 percent of revenue, meaning its dropping share doesn’t make it any less important for advertisers going after mobile users.

Impression volume grew overall worldwide, so the U.S. isn’t really shedding any share, but it is important to note that the rest of the world is becoming increasingly important to mobile marketers. The challenge now is to get more of those worldwide impressions to translate directly into revenue, but that’s something that could come as advertisers localize their content more to target new international growth audiences.

opera-media-works-logoOther key data from the Opera report today include iPhone share, which is still tops among mobile devices. iPhone earns 36.4 percent of all revenue derived from Opera’s mobile ads, while Android accounts for 27.8 percent. iPhone and Android are nearly tied in overall ad impressions, but iOS is still the clear leader overall thanks to the iPad’s continued dominance of the tablet market, with 43.8 percent of impressions served. Samsung rules the Android roost, however, with 58.5 percent, but overall Google’s mobile OS still trails Apple’s considerably.

For advertisers, another key takeaway is that rich media ads are doing amazing in terms of click-through rate, where standard banner ads are falling off in terms of engagement. Rich media campaigns that run within apps now average click through rates of 1.53 percent on mobile, even though by and large standard banner ads are still the most popular option.

Opera says that the rise of new regions indicates we could see considerable changes in the breakdown of mobile ads and where they’re served. Firefox OS has also launched in earnest, with the aim of serving a lot of those new markets, and Ubuntu Mobile and other projects are also coming out in the same vein. All of this (not to mention new hardware on the horizon from Apple) could change not only where ads are seen most, but also how they’re served, as we move into the latter half of this year.