December Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART)™

Sandwiched in between Apple & Verizon Wireless’ earnings and Apple’s “new product” announcement, comes December’s Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART)™, featuring December and Q4 data to provide advertisers insight into mobile trends from the Holidays.

Highlights from December’s S.M.A.R.T.:

• The U.S. Mobile Web: Decreased slightly to 66.6M users, according to Nielsen (Nov.)

• Special Section – Travel Knows Mobile.  Millennial Media Knows Travel: For the first time since S.M.A.R.T™ was first published in March ’09, Entertainment was not the top advertising vertical.  Portals and Directories took the top slot in Q4. Telecom, Finance, Entertainment and Dating round out the top 5.

• Engagement: Average monthly page views per user increased to 125 in December from 113 in November; and, average user session times increased from 5:02 to 5:09 (min:sec).
• Devices: Samsung represented approximately 23% of our network’s impression share in Q4. But the iPhone was the leading smart phone on our network with 41% of our network’s U.S. impressions.

Special Section- Travel Knows Mobile.  Millennial Media Knows Travel:

Our featured ad vertical, Travel, moved up from the number 10 spot, which it held for two consecutive quarters, to number eight.  In a November 2009 IAB report, 63% of respondents ranked Leisure and Travel as the second best category suited for mobile advertising, falling only behind Entertainment.

Speaking of Entertainment….our network’s Top Ten Advertising Verticals, ranked by spend, experienced several additional changes in Q4.  For the first time since we first published S.M.A.R.T. in March ’09, the Portals and Directories advertising vertical took the number one spot from Entertainment.  Consistently ranking in the Top 3 this year, internet giants continuously increased their investment in their mobile ad plans in 2009.  The number two ranked ad vertical, Telecommunications, was up from the number six spot in Q3 and the Finance vertical, which was not in Q2’s Top Ten, was the number three ad vertical in Q4’s Top Ten.

Engagement:

Traffic to Site remained the primary destination advertisers directed consumers to take an action throughout Q4 – it represented a three-month average of 41%. A correlation can be drawn between this and the Top 10 Ad Verticals– the advertisers represented in the top three, Portals & Directories, Telecomm and Finance, have developed persistent mobile sites and/or mobile applications. Custom Landing Page and Application Downloads battled it out for the second most popular campaign destination throughout Q4.

Mobile consumer behavior trends in December reflected the use of mobile as part of the holiday shopping research and purchase process. Average monthly page views per user increased to 125 in December from 113 in November.  The average user session time increased in December from 5:02 to 5:09. As stated in our Predictions for the Top 10 in ’10, we anticipate user session time increasing closer to 5:20 in 2010.

Device & Smartphone OS Highlights:

Smartphones represented approximately 38% of our network’s U.S. impressions in December and Q4. On any given month, we identify approximately 4K devices on our network, allowing an incredibly broad reach of mobile users, no matter what device they prefer to access the mobile web.

Media buyers planned for iPhone advertising in Q4, as the iPhone OS increased month over month and represented 47% of our network’s U.S. Smartphone impressions in December. RIM also had a strong presence with a 27% Q4 average impressions and three devices in our Top Ten devices for the fourth consecutive month: Blackberry Curve, Pearl and Storm.

Click here to view the full SMART http://www.millennialmedia.com/research/and feel free to sign up for auto delivery of these monthly Scorecards. If you have any questions or suggestions for future SMARTs, please send them our way: marketing@millennialmedia.com.

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