Every quarter, billions of in-app advertising opportunities unfold across global exchanges, each carrying signals about user behavior, ad performance, and emerging trends. At Aarki, our access to over 5 million queries per second or 38 trillion quarterly auctions provides us with a unique vantage point, enabling us to dissect patterns in user engagement and market shifts as they happen.
In this quarterly series, we will uncover those insights, revealing the strategies driving success and the trends shaping the future of mobile growth.
We update these insights every quarter so you can stay informed about the latest trends in in-app programmatic advertising. You can expect to be notified about its update in our upcoming newsletters.
Q3 2024
Quarter-on-Quarter Growth and Trends
- Overall Growth: Bids significantly increased from Quarter 2 to Quarter 3 across the top 3 countries (USA, Japan, and UK), showing a 1.5x growth overall.
- Category Expansion:
- Lifestyle and Social Networking saw healthy growth in the USA, with around 25% growth each.
- Categories like Books and Shopping maintained stability but had minimal increases (~5% to 10%).
- Photo & Video had a slight uptick of about 30%, reflecting an increase in interest in visual content creation apps.
- Emerging Categories:
- Games remained the dominant category across all countries, with bids growing by over 40%.
- Social Networking and Lifestyle categories have shown upward trends in both Japan and the USA, with growth rates close to 20% to 25%.
- Categories with Decline:
- Tools saw bid volumes dropping by nearly 25% between Q2 and Q3.
- Health & Fitness saw a decline of around 30% in bids, reflecting a potential shift in advertiser focus.
- For Music & Audio, a significant decrease of over 18% in bids was observed despite its previous growth in Q2.
- Social Networking: Bid volumes dropped by approximately 15%, indicating less competition in this category.
Country-Specific Observations:
- USA (The Top-Performing Country):
- The USA saw a substantial 30% growth in total bids from Q2 to Q3.
- Categories like Games, Music, and Entertainment had notable increases, with Games leading the charge, growing by approximately 40% quarter-on-quarter.
- Music and Entertainment also experienced steady growth of around 25% and 20% respectively.
- Japan:
- Japan exhibited an almost 2x increase in bids from Q2 to Q3.
- Categories such as Books and Lifestyle showed rapid growth (above 50%).
- Social Networking surged, with an increase of around 50% in Q3 compared to Q2, reflecting the ongoing shift toward community-driven app engagement.
- UK:
- The UK saw a relatively modest increase in overall bids, around 10-15% growth.
- Games remained the largest category but showed less growth (~15% compared to other regions).
- Categories like Shopping, Music, and Photo & Video witnessed smaller upticks, around 10-20%.
Predictions for Q4 of 2024
Based on trends from previous quarters and 2023, here are the predictive insights for Q4 2024, which is often called the ‘5th quarter’ because of the holiday season:
1. Increase in Cost per Mille (CPM):
- The CPM steadily increased throughout Q4 2023, almost doubling by week 52, indicating strong demand during the holiday season. A similar trend is expected for Q4 2024, with CPMs likely increasing by 70-100% from the beginning to the end of the quarter, reflecting heightened competition for ad placements during the peak holiday shopping period.
2. Impressions Decline, Cost Increase:
- In 2023, there was a gradual decline in impressions from weeks 40 to 47, followed by a resurgence starting in week 48. This suggests that while users may engage less leading into December, ad demand spikes again closer to major holiday sales. For 2024, we can expect a similar pattern, with impressions likely to decrease by around 30% early in Q4 but rebound by 10-15% toward the end.
- Despite the decline in impressions, costs continued to rise, indicating more expensive inventory. Costs are expected to increase by 50-60% throughout Q4 2024, reflecting premium pricing for holiday advertising.
3. Impression Recovery Towards End of Quarter:
- In 2023, the resurgence in impressions started in week 48 and continued into week 52, likely driven by Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday promotions. This trend will likely repeat in 2024, with a 10-20% boost in impressions starting around week 48, peaking in weeks 51-52.
4. Increased CPM and Spend Efficiency:
- In 2023, CPMs surged after week 46, with a 50% increase in CPM from weeks 46 to 52. In 2024, this trend will likely occur earlier, as advertisers increasingly compete for limited holiday inventory. Expect CPMs to rise by 60-70% during this time, especially from weeks 47-52.
5. Predicting Cost-Effectiveness:
- As seen in 2023, even with higher CPMs, impressions per dollar tend to stabilize by the end of Q4, when spending reaches its peak. For 2024, advertisers should prepare for more cost-efficient impression delivery towards the end of the quarter, when they can get 20-30% more impressions per dollar than in mid-Q4.
6. Strategic Bidding Timing:
- Advertisers should focus on maximizing efficiency by frontloading spend in the earlier part of Q4 (weeks 40-46) when CPMs are relatively lower, and then ramp up again in the last few weeks (weeks 48-52), where competition is fierce but potentially more valuable for holiday campaigns.
Q2 2024
- Games lead the pack with 68% of all auctions, more than 18x the #2 category, Entertainment
- Puzzle and Casual games stand out, capturing about 40% of the total auctions in games.
- Among non-gaming categories, Communication, Entertainment, and Social had the highest number of bids.
- Interestingly, the Books category maintains a notable number of auctions, coming in just behind Social, suggesting consistent user interest and an opportunity for targeted advertising.
- The US saw the highest flurry of bids between 7 and 10 pm EST, about 25% of the average daily bids.
- In Q2, iOS saw more than 2x the number of auctions than Android, with iOS 17 almost 4x more than all other iOS versions combined.
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