By Ariel Geifman

Smartphones and mobile browsing have become commonplace so the long awaited adoption and acceptance of mobile advertising has begun. With the ease of viewing high definition video on the go, and more and more content fitted for the mobile screen, mobile ads are beginning to show results. Not only do they result in customer conversions, they outperform their big brother, banner ads.

The increasing popularity of smartphones, in particular Apple’s iPhone, has boosted the reach of online display advertising among young and affluent consumers, one of advertisers’ most prized audiences. Today, according to comScore, 34.4% of US mobile phone owners and 28.8% of European mobile owners use their phone for online browsing and to view mobile ads.

They may be tiny, they may be new, but mobile ads trump browser based standard banners. A review of more than 230 million mobile impressions by MediaMind shows that users are more likely to click on mobile ads than on Standard Banners. Results show that for the same campaigns, mobile ads outperformed all other formats with a Click Through Rate of 0.61%, while the Standard Banners recorded a CTR of 0.07%.

Apple users are the biggest clickers

The iPhone leads the mobile advertising revolution. The touch screen and the enhanced browsing experience entice users to click more on banners, as can be seen by the higher CTR.

An analysis of CTR and the proportion of impressions served by device reveal high variability between manufacturers. Apple’s iPhone and LG devices lead the pack in terms of CTR performance, although a relatively low proportion of impressions were served to LG devices. RIM’s BlackBerry, which comes in second in terms of the proportion of impressions served, also commands the lowest CTR.

Similar analysis of performance by operating system shows that the performance of Apple’s iOS is nearly double that of Android based phones.

Night time is the right time

Mobile browsing habits are a whole different ball game when compared to traditional browsing. A large proportion of the browser-based banners are viewed between 9am and 5pm, when people are at the office. An analysis of impressions served by hour shows that the most popular hours for mobile browsing tend to be early evening, between 7pm to 9pm, with elevated activity throughout the evening.

Furthermore, an analysis of Click Through Rate by hour shows that performance is also above average between 7pm and midnight. CTR reaches its peak at 8pm. Serving ads in the evening can prove much more effective as compared to earlier in the day, and can reduce the cost per click of mobile.

With ever-expanding reach, higher performance, and evidence of better ROI than traditional display, mobile advertising can complement any display campaign. Don’t let the tiny size fool you; mobile can yield huge results.

To learn more, a full version of this research can be downloaded at: http://www.mediamind.com/Content.aspx?page=resource&id=112  

About the author

Ariel Geifman is the principal research analyst at MediaMind. In his role, Ariel provides insights and analysis to the online advertising community on industry trends, advertising effectiveness and performance benchmarks. He’s authored numerous reports that were widely quoted throughout industry blogs and publications including eMarketer, Mediaweek, Adotas, DM News, and eConsultancy among others.

Prior to MediaMind, Ariel worked as a management consultant specializing in marketing effectiveness and optimization, helping Fortune 500 companies improve their marketing and sales operations. He holds an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.

About the company

MediaMind, a division of DG (NASDAQ:DGIT), is a leading global provider of digital advertising campaign management solutions to advertising agencies and advertisers. MediaMind provides media and creative agencies, advertisers and publishers with an integrated platform to manage campaigns across digital media channels and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. During 2010 MediaMind delivered campaigns for approximately 9,000 brand advertisers, servicing approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across approximately 8,200 global web publishers in 64 countries.

www.mediaMind.com