Indonesia, India lead Asia in mobile ads impression

Norwegian software company, Opera Software, known for its Opera web browsers, today published its third-quarter State of Mobile Advertising report. The report shares indicates data and trends in mobile advertising worldwide.

As per the Q3 report iOS continues to deliver the highest effective cost per mille (eCPM). eCPM is a measurement in advertising that can be bought on the basis of showing the ad to 1,000 viewers.

This quarter, iOS led the pack again with a $1.64 eCPM with iPad and iPhone garnering $4.42 and $1.48 eCPMs, respectively. Android slipped down in the rankings with $0.88, well below RIM's $1.06.

The report shows that sports became the number one category for mobile ad revenue. Mobile sites and apps in the music, video and media category also grew, capturing 30% of total revenue, highest earners. However, business, finance and investing properties consistently generate more revenue per impression than any other category.

Mobile advertising revenue in Q3 goes to apps. Apps generated the highest 73% revenue within the Opera ad platform. The remaining comes from mobile web. Traffic measurement showed 8 in 10 visits on the Opera ad platform came from mobile apps, compared to 2 in 10 via the mobile web.

Compared to the rest of the world, mobile users in the UK trend towards interaction with content in arts and entertainment and health, fitness and self help. They are also four times more likely to use a BlackBerry.

The Opera advertising platform, based on Opera’s subsidiaries AdMarvel, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising, serves more than 10,000 mobile sites and apps, with more than 40 billion ad impressions per month and on-track to deliver more than $400 million in revenue to mobile publishers in 2012.

Across the Opera platform, North America (US and Canada) continues to generate the majority of ad requests at 70%. Indonesia, UK and India stand at the second, fourth and fifth positions, respectively.

One area of particular interest is the widening gap between the average eCPM of US and EU countries. And that of the global and Rest of World (ROW) countries. In Q2, we saw the EU eCPM rate almost identical to the global average, while the ROW average was 17% less than the global average. The EU below the global average with the ROW trailing by almost 44%.