Celtra Q4 Mobile Rich Media Monitor Finds ‘Native’ Ad Formats Boost Engagement with Video and Rich Media Content

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Celtra Inc., the industry leader for mobile display ad creation, serving and analytics, released its Rich Media Monitor insights report for Q4, 2013. The quarterly benchmark report, Celtra’s most transparent and accurate market analysis to-date, spotlights the performance of mobile display ad products, including standard rich media, social rich media, IAB rising stars and native ads.

“Scalability continues to be the main challenge and standardization that will allow for easy and seamless delivery of highly engaging content to these formats will open up the opportunity even further and eventually take native ads mainstream.”

The report’s Q4 metrics indicate accelerated adoption of native ad formats, which markedly outperformed other rich media ad formats during the quarter, even as standard ads continued to perform well. Moreover, widespread adoption of native ad formats continued to drive higher engagement, expansion and click through rates, especially when paired with mobile video.

Celtra Rich Media Monitor Q4 Key Findings:

  • Native Formats Drives Higher Engagement. Native formats were by far the best performers among all rich media ads. Both key performance metrics, expansion rate at 1.84% and engagement rate at 18%, were more than 2 times higher than on standard ads. Additionally, users spend 40% more time interacting with native ads than with standard ones.
  • Native and Video – A Winning Combination: Video, which is deployed in 35% of the ads running on the Celtra AdCreator platform, was instrumental in driving an 18% engagement rate in native ads this quarter. In addition, ads that combined native and video boasted a 63% video completion rate versus 39% last quarter.
  • Standard Ad Formats Remain Effective: Standard ads are still highly successful with a 9.5% engagement rate. Video remains the most engaging feature with 12% play rate and 40% completion rate.
  • Finance, Food & Beverage Top Categories for Video. The Finance and Food & Beverage industries showed the highest performance for video play rates at 16.2% and 14.5%, respectively, compared to an overall industry average of 12.2%. The Travel and Automotive industries showed the highest video completion rates at 47.9% and 43.5% respectively, compared to an overall industry average of 40.5%.

“Although native ad formats still represent only a small portion of mobile display, they are already proving to be an extremely valuable and indispensable part of mobile campaigns. Their overall performance and level of engagement with video and other rich media content offered through these formats is unprecedented,” said Matevz Klanjsek, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Celtra. “Scalability continues to be the main challenge and standardization that will allow for easy and seamless delivery of highly engaging content to these formats will open up the opportunity even further and eventually take native ads mainstream.”

For more detailed data from the report, please visit Celtra.com/knowledge.

About Celtra Inc.

Celtra Inc. is the global leader for mobile display advertising and analytics across mobile devices. AdCreator 3, which is used directly by top agencies, publishers and ad networks in more than 30 countries, is the only complete, SDK-agnostic platform for building, managing and tracking effective rich media mobile advertisements. Celtra’s unparalleled HTML5 ad formats and features are optimized for different mobile platforms and devices ensuring flawless functionality and the best possible user experience. For more information, visit Celtra at www.celtra.com or @CeltraMobile on Twitter.

Celtra is headquartered in Cambridge (MA), with offices in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London (UK), Tokyo (JP) and Ljubljana (SI).