Mobile Advertising Rockets In India, World's Fastest-Growing Smartphone Market

Mobile advertising volume in India grew the fastest in the world, climbing a record 260% since July 2013, even as the larger Asia-Pacific region where ad impressions delivery rose 70% this year, emerged the fastest-growing region globally.

India has the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. The ad traffic spike in India is on account of a transformation in the marketplace as mobile users shift from less-capable feature phones to advanced smartphones, said the San Mateo, California-based ad platform, Opera Mediaworks, in its report titled State of Mobile Advertising released on Tuesday. Tracking device adoption, the report – the ad network’s first study of the Indian market – said the Android platform has 41.7% market share in India while Apple’s iOS has just 0.4%.

 

[To be sure, increased ad traffic does not necessarily lead to increased revenues, as evident from Facebook’s recent India numbers. The social network is closing in on 100 million users in India but its India revenues in the financial year ending March 2013 were 0.1% ($12.57 m) of its total global ad revenues ($5.49b).]

Opera Mediaworks’ report said that both social sites and apps lead the mix of media types in advertising in India, consistent with global trends. However, India shows a significantly higher use of mobile app store sites, gaming and education sites. Interest in music and other streaming media sites are well below worldwide averages. Ads for games and mobile devices represented nearly half of all ad impressions, while classified ads accounted for 20% of impressions and mainly related to the direct sale of cars, motorcycles, trucks and bicycles.

Most ads are simple banners but more sophisticated richer ads are emerging as a creative ad medium. These rich-media creatives account for only 3.2% of impressions but over 26% of revenues.

Mobile advertising volume in India has risen 260% albeit from a low base (graphic:Opera Mediaworks)

The Indian audience for ads is predominantly young and male, Opera Mediaworks’ report said. The 18-24 age group account for over 60% of all users while males make up 82%.

“The biggest trend that we identified was really about future opportunity,” says Mahi de Silva, CEO of Opera Mediaworks, in a release. Mobile users are far more interested in categories like News, entertainment, business, finance and investing than the average Indian. “ Given the high monetization we’ve seen from these categories on a global level, it’s clear that both advertisers and publishers that can deliver rich user experiences on mobile sites and apps in those categories are going to be successful in India, as well,” he said.