Mobile Video SSP Positive Mobile reveals interesting trends in political, travel, CPG and home improvement (retail) mobile video ads in 2016.
Growth of Location-Based Ads was the Top Mobile Ad Trend in 2016
If there is one trend which defined mobile advertising in 2016 is the growth of location-based mobile video ads, which jumped from around 5% mid-year to 17% of all mobile video ads run in Q4 2016 according to Positive Mobile’s mobile video SSP.
“From local car dealer and retail ads to ads for congressional candidates leading up to Election Day, we’ve seen exponential growth in location-based mobile video ads,” said Tzahi Stein, CEO & founder, Positive Mobile. “Thanks to our integration with Nielsen channels, we’re able to offer rich demographic data and layer demo targeting in order to power this location-based mobile video advertising trend”.
APP DESIGN COMPANY IN LOS ANGELES trend is supported by research from BIA/Kelsey, an advisory firm focused on the local advertising and marketing marketplace, which just published research predicting that spending on local video targeting local audiences will grow by $5 billion from $32.6 billion in 2016 to $37.6 billion by 2021.
Other interesting annual trends seen in Positive Mobile’s quarterly mobile video ad category data reports include:
- Political ads: peaked in Q4 driven by a lot of location-targeted congressional campaign ads. Surprisingly, this category decreased from Q1 to Q2 as the presidential candidates using mobile video dropped out of the race.
- Travel ads: peaked in Q2 and Q4 leading up to winter and summer holiday vacations.
- CPG ads: grew from Q1 and peaked in Q3 and dropped back to Q1 levels in Q4.
- Home Improvement (in the Retail category): peaked in Q2 (spring time) as home owners used the warming weather to upgrade their homes.
Notable trends in Q4 2016 include the rise of Telecommunications. By comparing data from Q4 2015, when Technology was the #2 ad category with 18%, it became apparent that in Q4 2016, Technology marketers chose to sponsor ads for mobile phone service providers featuring their phones. This accounted for Telecommunications jumping to 10.7% after not exceeding 5.3% all year (while Technology was 2.5% versus 18% in Q4 2015). Other strong categories in Q4 2016 include Politics, Consumer Electronics in Retail (also benefitting from the drop in Technology from Q4 2015) and Toys (not surprisingly).
