Multiscreen advertising management and distribution platform, DG MediaMind, has released the results of its Mobile Performance Benchmarks report that quantifies the relative performance of mobile ad formats.

The research focuses on the performance of mobile formats and features within key verticals, with the goal of providing vertical-by-vertical insight into the most effective mobile advertising strategies for brand advertisers. IT is based on an analysis of more than 1bn impressions across more than 1,000 mobile campaigns since 1 January, 2013.

“Every day, consumers depend more on mobile technology for their media, day-to-day communications and connections to the world,” said DG CMO, Ricky Liversidge. “We analyzed these factors to give advertisers concrete data that can guide their mobile marketing decisions and help them reach the growing group of mobile users.”

For Entertainment advertisers, the top key performance indicator (KPI) was sustained in-market presence. Videos and social sharing were the features most frequently used by entertainment advertisers.

Image gallery, location and social sharing were the features most often leveraged by CPG/FMCG (Consumer Packaged Goods/Fast Moving Consumer Goods) advertisers to increase their most important KPI of brand awareness and consideration.

Video, location, weather and “download app” calls to action were the features most frequently leveraged by Retail advertisers to get consumers to visit brick-and-mortar locations. For Automotive advertisers, image and video galleries, and mobile site clickthroughs were frequently used to keep a featured product, vehicle model or sales promotion top-of-mind with auto buyers.

In addition to format performance, the study also examined mobile marketing success by vertical. News/Media and Entertainment had the highest mobile CTR among the verticals studied, at 1.2 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively. Other strong CTR performers include CPG (0.8 per cent) and Retail (0.6 per cent) and Restaurants at 0.5 per cent. Telecom was the lowest performing vertical with 0.07 per cent CTR.

The study also looked at consumer engagement with mobile video ads. It found that, among mobile rich media formats that include inline video, ‘polite’ rich media banners had a higher video start rate than their expandable counterparts, due to the fact that the video player is immediately viewable to users in polite rich media banners, unlike expandable banners, which require a user to engage the ad unit first before the player appears in the ad. 3.33 per cent of videos in polite banners were engaged, compared to 1.51 per cent for expandable banners.
You can download the report for free here.