State of Mobile Advertising, Q2 – 2014

• • Android inches up on iOS for monetization

• • Aggresssive growth continues in Asia

• The football championship, as measured by mobile

Android begins to chip away at iOS’s lead in monetization

Almost from the day of its release, iOS has been a market leader in delivering results for mobile advertisers. Then, in the fourth quarter of 2013, Android replaced iOS as the top smartphone platform in traffic volume. In Q1 of this year, Android moved into the No. 1 position as a mobile platform, exceeding Apple’s combined total for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch impressions.

This quarter Android extends its lead in traffic, now accounting for almost 50% of all impressions served — and it also begins to chip away at iOS’s lead in monetization. However, this is not at the expense of iOS’s total share, which actually grew to over 53% this quarter. Android’s progress in monetization is at the expense of other platforms, predominantly older, non-smart devices, which we refer to as “Other.” While still trailing iOS by a healthy margin, Android closes the quarter accounting for over 38% of revenue, up from 33% last quarter.

Android’s march to No. 1

Social-networking services remain No. 1 for traffic volume; Music, Video & Media takes the lead for generating revenue

This quarter we saw minor changes in the top publisher categories. With Social sites retaining the top position for traffic volume, Music, Video & Media sites and applications saw its small increase in monetization take it into the lead for revenue generation. For the first time in almost two years, Business, Finance & Investing lost its position as the top revenue generator per impression. This honor now belongs to Health, Fitness & Self Help.

Asia continues to grow its share of global ad impressions

At the end of 2013, Asia leapt over Europe as our second highest generator of ad impressions. Asia continues to grow aggressively but still struggles with revenue generation.

Brands, publishers get in on football action in Brazil

Every four years, national football (or “soccer”) teams compete in a tournament for the honor of being the top team. Like many other global sports events, the football championship is an athletic competition, media event and advertising extravaganza, all rolled into four exciting weeks.

First and foremost, the football championship is an athletic competition drawing the world’s best players and engaging a global audience. Even among avid fans, the football championship is special — as shown by the chart below. Traffic to sites and applications that focus on football increased dramatically as the event kicked off on June 12. And, interest remains high as we move toward the final round and fewer teams participate.

As a global event, we would expect interest in the football championship (as reflected by traffic to “soccer” or “football” oriented sites and apps) to be similar to our global distribution of traffic. However, this is not the case. Shown below are our top 25 countries for ad impression traffic and how those countries rank for traffic to “football” sites and apps.

This finding reinforces the fact that audiences for specific interest areas are not necessarily distributed equally across the total population. This fact is demonstrated further when we focus on the countries participating in this year’s football championship.

To assess which country is the most engaged with football sites and apps, we compared the ratio of the respective countries’ share of all ad impressions with its share of impressions to “football” sites and apps . As shown, our audience in Côte d’Ivoire is the most engaged as their team competes in Brazil, while the audience in Australia is the least engaged in their team’s participation. Note that on both of the country comparisons, the U.S. audience, the producer of most of our ad impressions and revenue, is relatively uninterested in the matches.

Though the football championship is a global event, this year it takes place in Brazil. Not surprisingly, we saw a significant increase in traffic from Brazil along with a huge increase in audience.

Interestingly, 79% of the increase in users from April to June came from the addition of Android devices. Fourteen percent of the increase came from “other”, or non-smart devices.

Finally, the football championship serves as a major advertising opportunity, especially for soccer’s governing body and their partners. Of the body’s seven sponsoring partners, six were supported by the Opera Mediaworks platform.