Mobile First Insights - APAC - 2016 Q1

Opera Mediaworks’ mobile marketing report reveals 2016 trends, presents actionable insights for outcome-driven advertisers

Singapore, July 21, 2016

Opera Mediaworks today launched the findings of a new report titled Mobile First Insights (MFI) in the APAC region, including Australia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The report found that in-app advertising is overtaking the mobile web channel across almost all Asia Pacific (APAC) markets. Click-through on apps was found to be between 1.3 times to twice as high as mobile web click-through in all surveyed APAC countries. App advertising revenue surpassed the mobile web channel across most APAC markets, by as much as 13 times in Singapore and Thailand. Only in India and Indonesia is revenue still higher from mobile web.

“Asia Pacific is a massive and growing market for app usage and app advertising,” said Vikas Gulati, Managing Director, Asia at Opera Mediaworks, “It’s fascinating to see that some trends, such as high usage of gaming, are reflected across almost all Asia Pacific markets, despite the range of cultural, social and economic factors that vary between countries in our region. We hope this new report will serve the needs of brands, agencies and publishers alike, and that it will be something that they look forward to every quarter because of the invaluable insights and category best practices that can be applied to their business,” he added.

This report is designed to help marketers navigate the fast-changing mobile environment and make strategic decisions that will drive real outcomes for their business.

More highlights from the report:

Users in APAC region spend more time on mobile apps

Games and broad-based entertainment categories (news, arts, music) are “must buy” categories – or, as we like to call it, “Today’s Premium” – to drive TV-sized reach and is where large amounts of time spent occurs. Looking at data from the top 100 apps that use Opera’s mobile ad platform to monetize their traffic, we saw that mobile users in Asia Pacific are spending about 46 minutes each in each of these popular apps – longer than the global average of 30 minutes. The average session length of mobile users in Asia Pacific was 9.6 minutes, also longer than the global average of 8.5 minutes.

Games is the top mobile app category across most APAC countries by impressions

The Games category has the highest number of ad impressions served on Opera Mediaworks’ mobile ad platform in Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. However, two markets showed differing results: India, where app usage is concentrated in the category of Music, Video and Media; and Indonesia, where a tech-savvy youth market is driving high usage of Technology and Computing apps.

However, the ads on Game apps do not necessarily have the highest conversion rates nor enjoy the highest click-through rates. Ads on Sports and Health & Fitness convert better than other categories in most APAC countries, except Australia where ads on Shopping convert the best.

SDK technology is key for targeting

Technology can mean the difference between a poorly-targeted campaign and a highly accurate one, the report found. Advertisers that work with a mobile ad platform – as opposed to directly with a media company – must be assured of direct SDK penetration in order to increase the likelihood of reaching highly targeted audiences.

Mobile ads SDK dramatically improves the ad experience that goes beyond customer creative. “It’s really about creating a trusted relationship between publisher and advertiser, which ultimately leads to greater opportunity for optimization and better outcomes against advertiser KPIs,” says Gulati.

Purpose-built creative for mobile

The report shares two mobile advertising campaigns that are prime examples of purpose-built creative, that is, creative solely made for mobile, which often leverages the native hardware and software capabilities that are built into mobile devices.

Readers will learn:

– How Hilton Hotels & Resorts used 360° video to give mobile users the full experience of being at their property, driving vacation bookings and other KPIs.

– How Stoli used haptic effects to make the shaking of a martini seem real, resulting in significant engagement and replays, as consumers were surprised and delighted by the vibration in their hands.

To read the full report, please follow this link.

About the MFI report

The report insights are based on Opera’s platform reaching over 1.4 billion users and include quarterly trends, advertising best practices, and what’s new in mobile technology and creativity.

Opera Mediaworks examined data from hundreds of global ad campaigns and billions of impressions served on the platform and combined it with some third-party data from external sources to paint a picture of where the mobile marketing industry is today, including “where the heat is” in the mobile app market and how consumers are interacting with mobile content and advertising messages.