- June 3, 2015

validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) Mobile Charter Results Highlight the Strengths and Advantages of Mobile Advertising

Earlier today, we announced the industry’s first unduplicated GRP and viewability solution for mobile advertising. This enhancement to Comscore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) includes daily unduplicated reporting of audience delivery and validation metrics across mobile and desktop, which are now available in a single reporting interface to all clients. The enhanced mobile campaign reporting through vCE accounts for both smartphones and tablets, and incorporates viewability insights for mobile browser and in-app ads.

Over the past year, we have been working with select clients to deliver mobile audience delivery data – including reach, frequency and GRPs – as part of a charter study. In partnership with our charter clients, we’re excited to share an aggregated view of some of the findings* which are based on more than 850 million gross impressions across a range of 10 clients:

  • Mobile in-target rates outperformed desktop. The overall in-target rate for mobile ads analyzed through the charter study was 56.9 percent, which compared favorably to desktop ads, where an average of 43 percent of ads hit their target. Better demographic targeting efficiency can likely be attributed to the fact that there is typically one user per mobile device, whereas desktop computers tend to have multiple users, meaning that cookie-targeting can be flawed. Many mobile targets are also less granular than those available for desktop ads, which could also contribute to the higher in-target rate.
  • Mobile in-target rates can vary drastically by demographic target. In-target rates ranged from 16 percent to nearly 90 percent, depending on the age and gender of the audiences being targeted. Interestingly, the most common break used by charter participants was the 18-49 age group, which had an average in-target rate of 68.2 percent – a rate nearly identical to desktop delivery for the same age group (69 percent).
  • Mobile provides strong geographic target accuracy. Charter study results indicated that the percentage of mobile ads delivered to the correct geography was 83.6 percent. This is lower than expected considering the market opportunity that mobile presents for being superior regarding location targeting.
  • Mobile delivered ad frequency on par with desktop. The overall frequency of ads delivered was 6.65, which is in line with what we’ve seen for display frequency. This indicates that advertisers can satisfy their frequency goals consistently across platforms, reaching consumers with the target number of ad exposures to fulfill their ad delivery goals.

These insights highlight the value of mobile advertising, particularly in the context of and in relation to desktop ads. With daily audience and viewability reporting of mobile ads through vCE, marketers now have a single, comprehensive view of digital campaign performance, whether their ads appear on desktop or mobile. This enables them to holistically plan, measure, evaluate and optimize their campaigns in a single tool, with a single view. To learn more about this solution: contact us

*Note: While the above generalized comparisons provide useful insight into the relative performance of desktop vs. mobile, it should be noted that the mobile data should not be interpreted as true normative insights given the size and representativeness of the mobile charter data. Comscore will soon be releasing mobile norms so that clients better understand the relative performance of their campaigns across both mobile and desktop.