Rating: No signs of mobile advertising slowing down globally
In its latest quarterly report on current trends dominating the mobile advertising industry, BuzzCity, reckons that mobile advertising traffic is on course to double in 2012. The data has been collected from BuzzCity’s global advertising network which is made up of global publishers and BuzzCity’s own mobile media properties. The BuzzCity quarterly report for Q2 2012 shows include increasing levels of adoption dominating for Q1-Q2 2012. It shows that BuzzCity’s global ad network has already served three-quarters of its annual traffic from 2011 in Q1-Q2 2012. Using this information as an indicator, BuzzCity predicts the global doubling of mobile advertising traffic is set to double in 2012. It also shows that Smartphones are becoming mainstream device in many individual markets worldwide. Overall, BuzzCity found that smartphone penetration has reached 47 per cent across its network, whilst in twenty countries at least 25 per cent of mobile surfers are using smartphones to go online.
The top country for smartphone use is Saudi Arabia with 94 per cent, closely followed by the UK with 90 per cent. Despite its economic woes, Spain came in third (88 per cent), whilst Singapore was in fifth with 80 per cent.
The big surprise for many is that in fourth place is China with 87 per cent – a county where you might expect feature phones to still play a major role.
In terms of mobile OS Symbian’s market share decreased from 50 per cent to 23 per cent, while iOS grew from 17 per cent to 30 per cent and Android grew from 12 per cent to 20 per cent.
Incidentally, Nokia’s non-smartphones are losing out to ‘white box’ handsets which utilise the popular MediaTek-based entry-level handsets.
However, Symbian is still holding strong in some Middle Eastern markets such Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Among the 94 per cent smartphone market share of Saudi Arabia, Symbian accounts for 79 per cent.
In Q2 2012, over 51.2 billion ad banners were delivered across BuzzCity’s entire network of over 10,000 publisher sites – to reach over 300 million unique users per month.
Another interesting finding is that during Q2 2012 , the average cost per click (CPC) across the entire BuzzCity network was US$0.016 per click. More detailed network monthly statistics are available here.
The report also highlighted growth hotspots like Costa Rica, which grew 104 per cent in Q2, Malaysia (56 per cent), Brazil (33 per cent) and Turkey (18 per cent)
Dr KF Lai, BuzzCity’s CEO, observed, “We are seeing no signs of mobile advertising slowing down across the globe. Smartphones usage is becoming mainstream but key to driving further growth will be the creation of original local content.”
Dr Lai added, “Marketers who engage their users with compelling content beyond conventional mobile advertising norms will be the ones to stand out from the rest of the pack and win out in this growing market opportunity.”
The full report – which includes details of the top mobile handsets globally for internet usage, as well as an in-depth look at brands and content strategy in mobile advertising, can be downloaded for free from here.
