Music, video and media apps drive almost 50 per cent ad impressions in India: Opera Mediaworks report

According to the report 'Mobile First Insights India', ad campaigns in the above categories witness higher levels of engagement than any other category, and in many cases, higher conversions as well.

The mobile advertising and marketing platform Opera Mediaworks has released a report titled 'Mobile First Insights (MFI) India', taking into account the first quarterly data and information. The report insights are based on Opera Mediawork's statistics which claims that the platform reaches out to over 1.4 billion users, and includes trends, advertising best practices, and what's new in mobile technology and creativity.

According to the data collected from the top 100 apps that use Opera Mediaworks to monetise their traffic, mobile users in India are spending 46 minutes a day with the top 100 apps, with an average session length of 9.6 minutes. The report says that entertainment apps lead the pack for the most popular apps category by impressions of which music, video, and media apps drive almost 50 per cent ad impressions in India, according to Opera's mobile ad platform in March 2016. Gaming apps follow a close second, with technology and computing apps bagging the third place.

"High revenues generated from mobile web is a strong indication of increasing smartphone users from India who are spending time online. The reasons for preferring mobile web over apps could range from device limitations to network conditions. However, we have observed higher returns for marketers spending on in-app advertising, especially in entertainment and gaming categories," says Vikas Gulati, managing director, Asia, Opera Mediaworks.

He adds further, "We hope the new report will serve the needs of Indian brands, agencies and publishers alike, as we aim to bring in key trends in mobile advertising, invaluable insights, and category best practices that can be applied to their business."

The report calls the music, video, and media apps as 'Today's Premium' since they provide real value to mobile users. Moreover, according to the report, ad campaigns in these categories witness higher levels of engagement than any other category, and in many cases, higher conversions as well. The click-through rate for apps is 1.7 times higher than that of mobile web.

The study further says that technology can mean the difference between a poorly-targetted campaign, and a highly accurate one, and hence, advertisers who work with a mobile ad platform and not directly with a media company must be assured of direct software development kit (SDK) penetration in order to increase the likelihood of reaching highly targetted audiences. Read the full report below.