THE MOBILE ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM

This whitepaper aims to deliver a high level overview about the mobile advertising ecosystem. It describes the different segments of the mobile advertising market as well as provides some insights on the different players and processes of the mobile advertising value chain.

The main conclusion of the whitepaper is, that the mobile advertising ecosystem has a high rate of fragmentation and diversification. On one hand the ecosystem is fragmented on a technological level since there are many devices with different operating systems and handsets on the market. On the other hand the market suffers from the very limited amount of marketing budgets in a specific geographical region. This massive fragmentation results in serious market inefficiencies that hinder advertisers to achieve campaign goals and publishers to properly monetize content.

Please download the whitepaper here

Millennial Media’s May 2010 Mobile Mix™ includes a new section on Mobile Developer Trends, featuring a snapshot of U.S. developer platform usage and the top mobile app channels.

Highlights from May’s Mobile Mix™:

• Gaming, Social Networking, and Weather apps placed in the top three positions on our Top Mobile App Channels, ranked by revenue in May.
• RIM remained the second largest OS on our network for the tenth consecutive month.
• Android ad requests grew 15% month-over-month. Since January, Android has grown 338%.
• iPad ad requests grew 160% month-over-month.
• Feature Phones increased 4%, taking some of the impression share from Connected Devices.

The full Mobile Mix™ report continues to track and report monthly mobile device trends for connected devices, mobile manufacturers and operating systems.

April Mobile Mix Highlights:

• Android ad requests grew 77% month over month. Since January, Android has grown 282%.
• RIM remained the second largest OS on our network for the ninth consecutive month with a 3% increase month-over-month and a 17% share of impressions.
• Although the Apple OS had a month-over-month decrease of 8% it still remained the leading OS on our network in April with 62% share of Smartphone impressions.
• Android Smartphone manufacturer, HTC, entered the top five this month for the first time and represented the largest increase within the Top 15 Manufacturers in April with a 2.5% impression share increase month-over-month.
• The Touch & QWERTY category experienced the largest amount of growth within the Device Input Mix and represented approximately 8% of our network’s impressions in April.

The full report is available here

These documents list the titles of all the currently available or forthcoming MMA Mobile Consumer Briefings for the US and EMEA (UK, France, and Germany).

Millennial Media’s March 2010 U.S. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART)™ Report is available here:

To download and sign up for future reports,including Millennial Media's device report, the Mobile Mix, visit: http://www.millennialmedia.com/research/

Millennial Media’s Mobile Mix™ tracks and reports monthly mobile device trends. Based on Millennial Media’s network data the Mobile Mix highlights monthly trends for connected devices, mobile manufacturers, and operating systems. This report complements Millennial Media’s monthly Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (S.M.A.R.T.™), which focuses on mobile advertising insights. Mobile Mix includes: Top 15 Manufacturers; Top 20 Mobile Phones; Device Input Mix; U.S. Carrier Mix; U.S. Smartphone, Feature Phone & Connected Device Share; U.S. Smartphone OS Mix; Device & OS Quick Stats.

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The growth in Smartphone use in the US is fuelling a range of new consumer behaviors and expectations and advertisers want to know what this means for them.  But with such limited industry knowledge about consumers’ mobile advertising behaviors and expectations, it is currently difficult for advertisers to commit media budget to this platform. Microsoft Advertising commissioned research to understand mobile media consumption and advertiser opportunities among U.S. Smartphone and iPhone users, across 10 different verticals. 

Data Innovation, Inc. conducted baseline research to understand the penetration of mobile financial services and uses of those services among smart phone users. The unique differentiation of our approach is that all of our research is conducted on mobile handsets. All respondents are validated and cannot participate if they do not use a smart phone. Response rates to Data Innovation surveys have been above 40%. Baseline data was collected in December 2009.

Financial institutions report that smart phone users are driving adoption, and the Data Innovation Mobile Money Study confirms this fact. In our survey, 246 smart phone users completed a mobile questionnaire (on their handsets) on the topic of mobile financial services. The study found that nearly 70% of respondents had used some type of mobile banking and/or payment service in the past three months.

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Given the tremendous growth of the mobile ad industry overall in 2009, we produced an industry-first snapshot 2009 Year-in-Review Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (S.M.A.R.T.)™.  

Highlights:
Sales Quick Stats

• Brand business grew 756% (brands really embraced mobile in ’09)
• Average deal size increased 353% year-over-year
• Top Ten 2009 Advertising Verticals by Spend (this will likely radically change in ’10, with Pharma, auto, and retail leading the charge)
• Non-U.S. impressions increased 117% year over year (Europe primarily drove this large increase)

Device Quick Stats

• 357% increase in Apple OS impressions
• 90% increase in RIM OS impressions
• Top 5 devices on the network

This year-end summary is based on observed traffic, server log reports, etc., on our network.  Since Millennial Media is the largest mobile ad network, we anticipate much of this data is fairly representative of the mobile ad industry as a whole.

In this report, we provide insight on the states of the LBS and Mobile Marketing/Advertising markets in the United States. We explore the evolution from subscription-based LBS towards free LBS and what is needed to make an ad-funded business model work. We discuss the benefits of bringing together the world of LBS and that of mobile marketing/advertising to create LBA. We further explain what the stakeholders in the market — consumers, advertisers, and the ―enabling companies (providers of LBS content, applications, and platforms) — stand to gain from LBA.

Finally, in the conclusion, we discuss what combination of technologies, business models, and strategies, need to align to unleash LBA’s market potential and why LBA is the path to creating more value in both the LBS and mobile advertising segments. We have also included the profiles and perspectives of several key market players that we interviewed in the first half of 2009, in an appendix.