Commentary

Asia Leads Mobile Ad Growth Worldwide

Led by China, Asia-Pacific countries are at the forefront of mobile ad growth globally.

That’s according to real-time ad platform Smaato, which said it analyzed data from 300 billion mobile ad impressions to shed light the APAC region. In China, Smaato saw first-quarter ad spending nearly double, year-over-year.

“China is undoubtedly the rising tiger of mobile advertising, as they were the [number one] major market globally in terms of ad spend growth across our platform,” said Ragnar Kruse, co-founder and CEO of Smaato. 

The firm attributed much of the growth to the Chinese/Lunar New Year, which fell on January 28, and drove 18% higher ad revenue (on average) than neighboring non-celebrating countries.

More broadly, mobile prime time appears to differ from country to country.

In the U.S. and the U.K., for instance, mobile ad views and spending peak on weekdays from 7 p.m.-to-11 p.m. and  3 p.m.-to-9p.m., respectively.

In Japan, however, prime time  on weekdays occurs between 7 p.m.-to-1 a.m. In China, mobile usage is consistent throughout the day.

In terms of categories, music apps category are the clear leader for total ad spending share. On Smaato’s network, they hog 16% of all ad spending.

The weather app category commands the highest eCPMs, by Smaato’s calculations.

Within the sports app category, eCPMs on Super Bowl Sunday jumped more than 25% versus other days in the same month, while the NBA Finals and Copa America spiked sports app eCPMs in late June by more than 40%.

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