Dive Brief:
- Smartphones are the most challenging screen for publishers to monetize by a wide margin, according to research from AdMonsters.
- Smartphones led the list at 66.7%, followed by tablets at 14.5%, and over-the-top and TV screens at 13%. Desktop screens were only cited by 5.8% of surveyed publishers.
- Separate research from Accenture found security and performance issues were the biggest challenge in managing mobile apps.
Dive Insight:
Even though monetizing smartphone screens led the pack in terms of difficulty per the AdMonsters survey, Accenture’s research found only 26% of respondents cited monetization issues as a mobile app challenge, falling in the middle of the pack among other potential issues.
Mobile apps may come with security and performance concerns for marketing executives, but mobile will remain a major marketing channel heading into 2016.
Mobile video is an almost essential advertising platform and will only become more important in the new year. Not to mention mobile has become a key element in email marketing. Adestra, a London-based email tech company, found 45% of its email opens were on mobile, compared to 36% on desktop and 19% in webmail. Litmus, a Boston-based email tech company, found 49% of email opens happened on mobile at the end of 2014, a figure that has risen fivefold since 2011. Movable Ink actually found the mobile open rate to be 66%. What's more, Nielsen reports that smartphone penetration had reached 80% at the end of the third quarter.
That said, marketers must be doing something right: Over the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, mobile sales grew 25.7% from last year.