Opera pinpoints top-10 mobile advertising highlights for 2012

San Mateo, USA and Oslo, Norway – December 11, 2012

Opera Software today released its year-end special edition of its State of Mobile Advertising report, highlighting key campaigns, brands, publishers and innovations in the mobile advertising industry for 2012. The company pulled these insights from the 10,000+ mobile apps and sites that serve ads using the Opera mobile ad platform, which is on track to deliver more than $400 million in revenue this year to mobile publishers.

The report reveals that:

  • The iPhone 5 reigned supreme. Though Samsung came out big this year with their Galaxy S III phone and had a significant lead on Apple’s release of the new iPhone, iPhone 5 adoption was faster and now accounts for 16.1% of all iPhone device traffic. Additionally, iOS impressions are in higher demand: they accounted for 44% of all impressions this year, and iOS 6 leapt to capture 65% of all ad requests from iOS-based devices.
  • Pandora, IMDb, Univision and Demand Media are top mobile publishers of the year. Through widespread adoption of their mobile apps and sites and creative, engaging rich media advertising placements, these publishers showed the possibilities of mobile monetization.
  • “Build a car” wins Most Innovative Ad Unit. In Q4, popular car manufacturer Kia introduced a custom car-building tool as a tap-to-expand ad unit that lets users spin the car around and choose different colors before navigating to a full mobile site.
  • Mobile consumers are devouring music, video and entertainment content. Nearly one in four (23.8%) mobile impressions in 2012 was served on a site or app in the Music, Video and Media category. Together with Entertainment, these publishers generated 30% of total revenue for the year.
  • New targeting capabilities enable more than 2% CTR. The top-performing campaign of the year from a mobile gaming app achieved a strong 2.1% click-through rate (CTR), and those levels of effectiveness are now becoming more common as advertisers gain access to better targeting technologies.

To read the full report, go to www.opera.com/sma/ .