Social networking is the fastest-growing content category across both mobile browsers and applications, according to a June report by comScore. In the last six months, there has been a 50% rise in mobile ad campaigns that direct users to multiple social networking sites, according to the May metrics report released July 1 by mobile ad network Millennial Media. Overall, 12% of campaigns direct people to social sites as a call to action within ads, a higher proportion than send users to m-commerce sites or to store locator maps.
While mobile advertisers are increasingly trying to drive users to brand pages or promotions on social sites, click-to-call remains the most common type of action they encourage in ads (at 36%), followed by signing up for a service (29%), submitting a form (28%), application download (24%) and watching a video (23%).
77% of mobile ad campaigns overall directed users either to a mobile site or a custom landing page. According to Millennial, spending on rich media units is up 85%. MediaPost anticipates that spending on mobile rich media ads more broadly will increase dramatically with the launch of the iAd platform (also on July 1).
Among other findings from the Millennial report, the number of ad requests per page view was just over one (1.03) and the average monthly page views per user was 108. The average session time was up by a minute to five minutes — three seconds — as the ending of the school year led to more time spent on mobile phones. See MediaPost articles for more findings.
