Programmatic mobile advertising: USA vs UK, Germany, India, Brazil, Japan, and more

Programmatic mobile advertising is 1 of the most competitive and fastest evolving marketplaces on the planet. It’s also fascinating because peeking behind the curtain reveals cool insights about different nations and the cultural character of the people that live there … all of which is super-relevant for mobile marketers who want to grow globally.

I recently had a chat with Kayzen’s Tomas Yacachury about his latest Mobile Programmatic Inventory Index, and the result was dozens of super interesting insights about mobile advertising. Which makes sense: the report is based on over 140 billion bid requests in 630,000 apps used by over 1.1 billion people.

Hit play and keep scrolling …

Programmatic mobile advertising stats: buyer beware?

Any Growth Masterminds guest who shares insights on statistics and averages like “the average human has 1 testicle” is pretty awesome in my mind. (The clear message: stats and averages are wonderful, but they need to be taken with a grain of salt, or maybe a handful.)

That said, the report reveals the median prices of different ad formats in 9 different countries. In the USA, for example, you’d pay the following, on average:

• Rewarded ads
  • iOS: $10.65
  • Android: $10.49
• Interstitial ads
  • iOS: $3.83
  • Android: $5.37
• Banner ads
  • iOS: $0.20
  • Android: $0.25
• Native ads
  • iOS: $0.23
  • Android: $0.41

But precisely because averages — even medians — aren’t super-helpful when guiding specific decisions for specific apps in specific verticals, Kayzen also includes a percentile chart that shows what percentage of programmatic mobile advertising inventory is accessible at a given price point.

For example, rewarded ads are often the most expensive to buy. A CPM of about $3.50 will allow you to access just 25% of American ad impressions, but at $17-20, you’re hitting 75% of the market.

Expanding reach in programmatic mobile advertising

Clearly, it’s expensive to run rewarded ads. Interstitials are expensive too, because both formats demand full attention and get access to the full screen to pitch people on downloading an app.

Since they often have great ROAS, you kinda get what you pay for.

But if your budgets aren’t vast, or you can’t instantly deploy tens of millions in ad dollars because your payback period is long and you need to get some return before you re-up and redeploy, there are other options. They can even lead to more success with higher click-through and conversion rates.

“Let’s say you are running a campaign where you want to really maximize reach, right, and get as many users as possible with a limited budget,” says Yacachury. “I think you probably want to go with the cheapest ad formats and more frequency, which are usually banners and sometimes native, depending on the country.”

The engagement rate is low, but the cumulative brand impact can boost the performance of your more expensive direct response ad units.

 

 

Insights on 6 key countries

Watch the full video for more, but we chatted about programmatic mobile advertising in 7 specific countries. 

Here’s what I learned …

United States: money, money, money

Advertisers know that the U.S. is the most competitive and expensive ad market globally across all ad formats. And that’s precisely the biggest challenge for marketers: paying attention to pricing, finding pockets of affordability while not sacrificing performance.

Banners, interstitials, and rewarded all work well, but Yacachury has seen native work also, even in gaming.

UK: no to native

Like the U.S., the UK is heavily iOS-centric.

Unlike the U.S., native advertising doesn’t work amazingly well. Something about the British character, perhaps? But that’s not a hard-and-fast rule: the clothing marketplace Vinted, which is big in the UK, requires a native strategy.

Interestingly, the UK as well as Germany are 2 countries where it’s not just iOS device IDs that are in short supply. About half of Android device traffic also lacks device IDs, so you have to pay attention to price distributions for no-ID traffic. 

Germany: shopping & weather

Apparently Germans are obsessed with checking the weather.

“Clearly the weather is not good in Germany, right?” says Yacachury. “Because everyone’s using weather apps.”

Along with weather apps, shopping and e-commerce apps are huge in Germany.

Banner ads work well here — makes sense, given those app categories — and native ads work well in Germany. (Which is interesting: why would the British not respond well to native but Germans would? Just another mystery in programmatic mobile advertising!)

India: 97% Android

Either the most populous country in the world or soon to be, 97% of the programmatic mobile advertising bid requests in India are from Android devices.

TrueCaller, the massive caller ID and blocking app, is huge here, and there’s a reason for that. India is often ranked among the top countries for spam and scam calls. Also, streaming and video apps are hugely popular: the phone is the TV and the computer and everything else.

“Banner and native are a must-have, if you’re running campaigns in India,” says Yacchury. “The other thing is entertainment apps … especially streaming apps such as video player apps … instream video is actually very relevant as well.”

CTV isn’t that massive in India, but TV and movies on mobile are huge.

Brazil: samba, baby, samba

Spotify is 1 of the biggest sources of programmatic mobile advertising bid requests in Brazil, with massive penetration. But Brazil also has a very broad range of apps and verticals that are big in mobile, so advertisers need a well-rounded ad format strategy in the country.

In other words: use all the formats.

One other interesting fact: in Brazil, many more iOS users opt into ATT, thereby providing their IDFA for ad measurement, tracking, and retargeting.

Japan: manga magic

Japan is unique among nations, and has been for some time.

“Japan is probably my favorite country when I look at this report because as you mentioned, it’s just so different,” Yacachury says.

One key thing: manga.

Japan’s love for manga drives its unique advertising landscape. Interestingly, that means rewarded formats have huge traction here, because the manga and anime mags offer additional reading in return for watching ads. And, as you’d think, native strategies tap into how Japanese people use tech really well.

One other fun fact: Japan is 1 of the biggest Twitter-oh-yeah-X using nations on the planet. So that’s an option here too.

So much more in the full conversation!

Yeah, you kinda have to check the full convo to get all the rich nuggety chunks of data-driven goodness in this episode. Watch it above (and subscribe to our YouTube) or get connected to the Growth Masterminds podcast on any major podcasting platform: get the links here.

A bit of an overview:

• 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 01:30 Overview of the Programmatic Inventory Index
• 05:09 Deep Dive into Ad Formats and Categories
• 14:17 Country-Specific Insights
• 14:25 Ad Pricing Segmentation and Strategy
• 26:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Enjoy!