US mobile entertainment audience jumps 28% in past year

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Mobile AppsVdopia, provider of mobile video advertising, reports that smartphone advertising is having a significant impact on the way that consumers interact with various forms of entertainment. The number of people who consumed entertainment content on their smartphones ever in a month jumped 28% in the past year to 109 million. Buying movie or event tickets via mobile has grown nearly 40% in the past year. Mobile entertainment audiences not only are twice as likely to click on mobile ads but 45% recall seeing ads vs. only 24% for non-mobile entertainment audiences.


“Mobile is fast becoming a central hub of entertainment decisions,” says Saurabh Bhatia, co-founder, Chief Business Officer, Vdopia. “Historically digital entertainment video advertising, especially on mobile devices, was almost exclusively about creating awareness for new films or TV programs. But increasingly we are seeing that mobile video advertising is driving ticket sales for films and helping to increase ratings for TV Shows. ”

During the first quarter of 2014, Vdopia saw a shift by entertainment brands using its media network with a global reach of 330 million, towards calls for specific consumer action like signing up for TV tune-in alerts and downloading music. While awareness for theatrical and DVD release campaigns (39%) were the top advertised sub-category among entertainment brands in terms of total ad spend, when it came to clicking on an ad to take an action, 85% of mobile entertainment ad consumers chose watching more video over any other action far outpacing Get Tune-In Alerts (24%); Download From Store (21%) and Provide Info/ Register (15%).

About 84% of the total media ad spends by entertainment advertisers on the Vdopia network in Q1 went to video and rich media ads. Banner ads were less than one-third of total impressions and are constantly decreasing.

“This is astonishing as it highlights the transformation in the mobile advertising landscape from static banner ads to more engaging and interactive video and rich media ads,” says Bhatia.

Among other findings:

•           62% of smartphone owners are comfortable with 15-30 seconds commercial if they get to stream TV/movies for free on their smartphones. This is interesting considering only 56% computer/laptop audience and 51% of connected TV audiences are comfortable with commercials in exchange for free streaming on their devices.

•           Using multiple creative executions in a single campaign proved to be a winning strategy for entertainment brands. Nearly 40% of total ad spend involved multiple customized ad creatives in a single campaign. Vdopia also saw a 51% increase in video views for campaigns with multiple ad creatives when compared to campaigns with single ad creative.

•           37% of ad impressions were targeted to a certain demographic, thus making demographic targeting the preferred form of segmenting users. Device targeting was the next most-used form of targeting users as entertainment advertisers asked consumers to download songs from stores which are different for iOS, Android or Windows smartphone users.

•           Americans now average 33 minutes each day watching videos on their smartphones.

•           162 million smartphone owners in the U.S. and Canada went to a movie theatre in 2013.