Highlights from December's S.M.A.R.T.

Highlights from December’s S.M.A.R.T.:

Special Section- Travel Knows Mobile.  Millennial Media Knows Travel: 

·         Our featured ad vertical, Travel, moved up from the number 10 spot, which it held for two consecutive quarters, to number eight.  In a November 2009 IAB report, 63% of respondents ranked Leisure and Travel as the second best category suited for mobile advertising, falling only behind Entertainment.

·         Speaking of Entertainment….our network’s Top Ten Advertising Verticals, ranked by spend, experienced several additional changes in Q4.  For the first time since we first published S.M.A.R.T. in March ’09, the Portals and Directories advertising vertical took the number one spot from Entertainment.  Consistently ranked in the Top 3 this year, these internet giants continuously increased their investment in their mobile ad plans in 2009.  The number two ranked ad vertical, Telecommunications, was up from the number six spot in Q3 and the Finance vertical, which was not in Q2’s Top Ten, was the number three ad vertical in Q4’s Top Ten.

Engagement:

·         Traffic to Site remained the primary destination advertisers directed consumers to take an action throughout Q4 – it represented a three-month average of 41%. A correlation can be drawn between this and the Top 10 Ad Verticals– the advertisers represented in the top three, Portals & Directories, Telecomm and Finance, developed persistent mobile sites and/or mobile applications. Custom Landing Page and Application Downloads battled it out for the second most popular campaign destination throughout Q4.

·         Similar to the Retail & Restaurants vertical featured in Q3’s SMART, the Travel vertical leveraged various Campaign Targeting Methods to execute their goals. Whether it was age and gender for business travelers or a broad-sweeping promotion to attract vacationers – mobile was the way to reach the on-the-go consumer in Q4.

·         Mobile consumer behavior trends in December reflected the use of mobile as part of the holiday shopping research and purchase process. Average monthly page views per user increased to 125 in December from 113 in November.  The average user session time increased in December from 5:02 to 5:09 (min:sec). As stated in our Predictions for the Top 10 in ’10, we anticipate user session time increasing closer to 5:20 in 2010.

Device & Smartphone OS Highlights:

·         Smartphones represented approximately 38% of our network’s U.S. impressions in December and Q4. On any given month, we identify approximately 4K devices on our network, allowing an incredibly broad reach of mobile users, no matter what device they prefer to access the mobile web.

·         Media buyers planned for iPhone advertising in Q4, as the iPhone OS increased month over month and represented 47% of our network’s U.S. smartphone impressions in December. RIM also had a strong presence with a 27% Q4 average impressions and three devices in our Top Ten devices for the fourth consecutive month: Blackberry Curve, Pearl and Storm.