Publication date: 16 Apr 2019

Mobile video ads gain the lead

GPMD, a leader in the Russian digital ad market, has summed up results of 2018 and made a forecast for this year. 2018 was a year of breakthrough for mobile video in Runet: audience grew by another 11%, spending on mobile video ads doubled and reached 4 billion rubles. 14 millions of people watched videos only on their mobile devices that exceeds a quarter of Russia’s population in cities with 100,000 or more inhabitants.

• Mobile video consumption was fueled by older users

In 2018, a growth in mobile video consumption was due to older people. The trend was most widespread among users aged 35-64. They started using mobile devices more (+24%) and desktop devices less (-17%) to watch videos online.

• Fraudulent traffic loses ground

One of the most popular services of 2018 was verification of fraudulent traffic. GPMD was the first digital ad seller who checked through all video platforms of its ad network to reveal any fraudulent activity. Amid a rise in the number of ad traffic checkups performed by businesses, there was a fall in Runet’s volumes of fraudulent traffic bought by advertisers. Publishers started using third-party systems of verification. According to Weborama Russia, the share of such traffic was 14.7% in 2018 against 45% registered a year earlier. Weborama Russia points out that Runet’s indicators got closer to those of the European and American markets where the share of fraudulent traffic is in the range of 5-15%, according to international traffic verification services.

Among reasons of a substantial decline in the share of invalid traffic, Weborama Russia names systems of internal verification introduced by sellers and publishers for their partners and partner networks. These systems make it possible to disconnect fraudsters promptly. The popularity of verification systems has had a positive impact on the quality of traffic analysis as well: the more traffic is analyzed, the more examples of normal and abnormal user activity there are.

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Voice ads gain popularity in Russia

Voice advertising is a driver of digital audio ad market, which saw a threefold increase to 465.3 million rubles, including VAT, in 2018, IAB Russia reports. In the era of voice assistants and smart speakers, voice advertising with artificial intelligence (AI) makes it easier to measure how many of your audio messages have been listened to and what is your conversion rate.

In the nearest future, voice ads with AI will be reaching out to users when it is convenient for each of them. Instead of ineffective attempts to deliver ad messages, the interactive ad will be able to ask clients whether or not they want to listen to information about a product.