This week, Pixalate dropped its Q2 2024 Global Mobile App Ad Spend Trends Report, shedding light on the estimated global open programmatic ad spend on mobile apps from the top app stores, Google Play and Apple App Store.
The report includes spending breakdowns by IAB categories and subcategories to offer more context on advertiser trends in the quarter. For the report, Pixalate’s data science team analyzed over 50 billion open programmatic ad transactions across 5.1 million apps.
Why This Matters:
Pixalate’s report estimates that $6.4 billion was spent globally on open programmatic advertising in mobile apps during Q2. Of this, an estimated $4 billion — nearly two-thirds or 63%! — went to apps in the “Video Gaming” IAB category. The spend isn’t necessarily a surprise given the many benefits of in-app video game advertising. These apps have the ability to attract a large, loyal, and engaged user base. Moreover, on top of targeting opportunities, they also tend to offer up immersive formats that support high-performing campaigns.
(Last year, contextual adtech company GumGum published a blog post that does a good job of summarizing the benefits of in-game advertising in greater detail. They even include a case study on a campaign with Samsung that showed a big increase in purchase consideration.)
Experts React:
Key to keep in mind, however, is that as spending on video game apps increases, the ad formats and overall experience must be appropriate to ensure audience engagement and protect brand equity.
Gabrielle Heyman, vice president of global brand sales and partnerships at Zynga, says rewarded video ads are a good example of a good in-game ad experience. From a Digiday post a few weeks ago: “Rewarded video ads are the gold standard for video in games because players are in complete control over the ad experience — they can choose if and when they see an ad. When there’s some friction point in the game, and they have to either pay for an in-app purchase to get over that hump or watch an ad to give them the lives needed to continue — it helps propel the game.”
Our Take:
Beyond video games, the top-three in IAB category mobile app ad spend was rounded out by music and audio apps, followed by technology and computing apps.
Pixalate also shared data on what adtech sellers handled the spend. According to the report, for example, 10.3% of programmatic ad impressions in the video gaming category were handled by Verve Group, followed by Magnite at 9.6% and InMobi at 7.5%.
The “Healthy Living” IAB app category saw its share of open programmatic ad spend increase by about 70% year-over-year. In APAC, Google managed 41% of open programmatic ads in the “Music and Audio” IAB app category. In North America, TripleLift was responsible for 28% of open programmatic ads in the “News and Politics” IAB app category.
The findings are a useful snapshot of the market. It’s not the entire story, of course. US mobile ad spending, for example, will cross $200 billion this year, according to Emarketer. That same report also finds that mobile apps will claim 82% of all mobile ad spend on the year.
