Takeaways from the IAB Mobile Conference

Wed, 07/21/2010 – 08:54 by The following are some “takeaways” by Citi analyst Mark Mahaney from the recent IAB Mobile Marketing Conference in New York (we didn’t attend):
  • JumpTap reported 3X user engagement in Rich Media Ads on mobile smartphones vs. PC display. Also: 2X the views of mobile movie trailers for studio clients vs. on PCs.
  • PointRoll also noted iPad Ad (display) interaction at 1.10% vs. Mobile at 0.5%, and desktop at 0.26%.
  • Jumptap: 42% of its customers advertise on RIM, followed by 24% on iPhone, 15% on WinMo, 13% on Android. By contrast 55% of JumpTap’s mobile traffic comes from non-smartphones.
  • Quantcast: the iPhone had 65% mobile Web traffic share and Android had 12% less than a year ago. In May the iPhone had 59% share, while Android had 20% share.
  • Mobile Search ads: Advertisers Citi spoke with said search on mobile works well for branded terms, but not for generic terms. Also CPMs continue to be prohibitively high due to the current 2 ads at the top of Google, which result in aggressive bidding of keywords to get ads one of those two spots.
These data reflect a nice snapshot of the market today. There’s higher engagement with mobile ads but the medium is more complex and challenging in some respects, as the search data suggest. Android is an increasingly viable #2 platform to the currently dominant iPhone. Feature phones (and SMS) should also not be neglected. While smartphones in the US constitute about 23% of the market, that means non-smartphones are 77%. While the numbers will become more balanced over time there are still lots of people on feature phones in the US and around the globe.