In-app mobile ad impressions rose 26% over last year as advertisers move to Private marketplaces (PMPs) to buy and sell inventory, according to new research.
PubMatic reveals finding from their Q2 2019 Quarterly Mobile Index (QMI) that incorporates PubMatic’s proprietary impressions, revenue and eCPM data to provide a high-level analysis of key trends within the mobile advertising industry.
Key findings:
- Mobile in-app inventory unlocks revenue for the advertising industry – In Q2 2019, in-app impressions rose 26% over last year and is rejuvenating creative talents and fostering net new revenue growth for the advertising industry.
- In-App PMPs take centre stage in programmatic media buying – Amid fraud concerns last year, advertisers are moving from the open market to PMPs and advertisers are on track to spend $27 billion in digital display spending in 2020, and over half of which will be through PMPs.
Based on PubMatic’s findings, in-app inventory has seen significant changes as for the first time iOS has emerged as the leading in-app operating system, while APAC has surpassed EMEA as the second largest region for in-app ad impressions in Q2 2019. iOS’ share now exceeds 50% of worldwide mobile in-app impressions in Q2 2019, up from one-third the year prior; overall, shares grew in all regions globally, even in APAC where Android remains dominant. Significantly, APAC now accounts for over a quarter of the global inventory.
“After mobile inventory quality setbacks with fraud last year, the industry is evolving to increasingly leverage PMPs to safeguard transactions over open RTB’s and will be the dominant approach to buying programmatic advertising as soon as next year,” shared Emma Newman, CRO, EMEA at PubMatic. “The entire industry is coming together to address in-app quality concerns and we’ve already seen steady growth in adoption rates, by about 12% of the top 1000 industry apps publishing app-ads.txt files as of mid-July 2019.”
Wayne Blodwell, CEO, The Programmatic Advisory says: “Many traditional advertisers have been wary of in-app advertising for quite some time owing to the difficulty in measuring actions from app to web environments and the fact in-app is riddled with fraud. However, the measurement challenges are not going away. In the short-term, to mitigate some of the risk fraud presents, buyers can apply whitelists and PMPs with trusted app owners. This allows brands to freely spend in an environment which is increasingly taking up a greater share of a user’s daily attention and should not be ignored as part of the media buying mix. It’s great to see the results of this study highlight this mindset shift from buyers”.
Download the full Q2 2019 Quarterly Mobile Index Report here.
