Mobile ad-building platform Celtra has released its latest Mobile Display Ad Performance Report, covering Q1 2015. For the first time, the report includes viewability metrics; a comparison of desktop vs. mobile viewability and a new video metric, video consumption rate, in addition to previously-reported video completion rate. Both are reported for auto-play and user-initiated video. Also, ad engagement rate is reported as a standardized metric for banner, interstitial and expandable banner format.

The report reveals that share of banner format impressions is at 30 per cent, and  increasing over time. The share of impressions coming from the web environment is the highest yet at 44 per cent. The expansion rate is also the highest to date at 0.76 per cent. The banner ad engagement rate is 1.09 per cent, the rate for interstitials is 3.94 per cent.

When it comes to viewability, 63 per cent of impressions are viewable by the IAB’s viewable impressions definition, which states that a display ad is viewable if 50 per cent of its pixels are in view for a minimum of one second, 30 per cent for larger ad units.

According to the report, mobile devices tend to have higher viewability rates in the web browser environment – 63.3 per cent for mobile compared to 54.5 per cent for desktop. Tablets deliver slightly higher viewability rates (64.1 per cent) than smartphones (62.8 per cent).

The report also reveals big differences in video completion rate depending on the video play setting (user-initiated or auto-play). For banners with auto-play, the completion rate is 54 per cent, compared to 31 per cent for banners with user-initiated playback. For expandable banners etc, when the user clicks through to the expanded unit, the video completion rate is higher for user-initiated videos, at 59 per cent, compared to 26 per cent for auto-play videos.

Banners tend to show higher ad engagement rate on smartphones (1.15 per cent) than on tablets (0.81 per cent). For expandable banners, tablet performance surpasses smartphone in ad engagement (expansion) rates, expanded unit engagement rates, and video play rates on the expanded unit. Finally, when users are presented with video in an interstitial format, they consume more of the video content when on a smartphone than when on a tablet.

The data sample for Celtra’s Quarterly Benchmark Report is composed of ads that start, end and run on Celtra’s platform over a time period of three months (one quarter). Ads that are included were part of campaigns with a minimum of 100,000 impressions, each ad running on a minimum of 50,000 impressions in the defined time period. All ads without tracking of events are excluded from the sample.

After the initial database is set, Celtra firstly performs random sampling of campaigns inside the set of defined verticals. This is followed by a random sampling of ads by ad format and random sampling by ad features, in order to acquire a sample with a balanced ratio of ads from chosen verticals, different ad formats and feature groups. Finally, Celtra filters the sample to ensure there is no more than one creative per ad format from the same campaign included, in order to avoid duplication of very similar values and compromising the final results.