Saturday, September 3, 2011

Mobile App Ad Inventory Hits Inflection Point

USappInventory vs USonlineDisplayAdSpend resized 600
Inflection points are important, representing the point at which some activity, behavior or trend dramatically changes its growth rate and adoption pattern. It appears mobile app ad inventory has reached that point.

U.S. mobile application inventory is not only growing at a staggering rate, but also poised to absorb the equivalent of the entire U.S. Internet display advertising spend by the end of this year, according to Flurry.

That could have some interesting implications. Exploding inventory generally leads to significantly lower prices. And that could have implications across the online and mobile ad market, not just within the mobile app business.

Observers have pointed out, repeatedly, that advertiser spend on mobile and online advertising significantly lags end user engagement with various forms of media. The explosion of mobile app inventory is likely to momentarily make that situation worse.

Another way to look at this is that, in approximately two years, mobile app inventory is growing so aggressively that it could easily meet the demand of a mature, 15-year-old form of online advertising (display ads). 

Flurry's analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption. This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage.
Chart MobileApp vs DesktopWeb Consumption resized 600


Growing at 91 percent over the last year, users now spend over 81 minutes on mobile applications per day. This growth has come primarily from more sessions per user, per day rather than a large growth in average session lengths. Time spent on the Internet has grown at a much slower rate, 16 percent over the last year, with users now spending 74 minutes on the Internet a day.

Flurry found that the average user now spends nine percent more time using mobile apps than the Internet. That was not the case just 12 months ago. In 2010, the average user spent just under 43 minutes a day using mobile applications versus an average 64 minutes using the Internet.

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