Engagement, expansion and completion: Why Q3 was a great time for mobile display ads

The latest edition of reports sees the growth witnessed in previous quarter continue in Q3 across key engagement metrics, such as ad expansion rate, ad engagement rate and time spent. Smart video ad formats are still outperforming other format types in engagement rate and time spent while ads placed within apps witness longer time spent on ad unit and higher video play rates than ads placed in web browsers.

Highlights:

• Ad expansion rate for Standard ad formats keeps increasing steadily this year. In Q3, Standard format type ads received a 0.66% expansion rate, compared to 0.61% in Q2. With 0.68% Smart video format ads still have a slightly higher expansion rate.
• Ad engagement rate rose by 16% since Q2 for Standard format ads, while it remained roughly the same for other format types. The highest unit engagement rates for expandable banners were witnessed in technology (18.2%) and entertainment verticals (17.4%). As far as ad features are concerned, presentation features achieved higher engagement rates than video and gaming features. This is mainly because of Swipey, the most used presentation feature.
• Time spent on Standard expandable banner has increased by almost 4 seconds since Q2, but Smart video ad formats continue to keep the users engaged the longest (23.7 sec). The longest time spent on ad unit was witnessed in CPG (26.3 sec) and finance verticals (23.4 sec).
• Manual video play rate is slightly lower this quarter for Standard ads, while Smart video format ads continue to use auto-play video settings (which are not included in video play rate performance benchmark). Technology vertical again stood out compared to other verticals in video play rate performance with 30.2%.
• Video completion rate reached a staggering 41.5% in Q3, which means that over 40% of users complete watching videos in display ads.

Click here to view the full Mobile Display Ads Performance Report.