Dive Brief:

• Mobile Advertising Watch reports that mobile video ads are delivering 11x higher CPMs for publishers than other mobile ad formats on Smaato's mobile advertising platform.
• Smaato found in-app video ads drive more ROI for advertisers than video ads on mobile websites, with iOS ads outperforming the mobile web on CPMs by 3x.
• The report found that apps in the arts and entertainment category made up 52% of global ad spend on the platform, with other categories (such as hobbies and interests at 15%) lagging far behind. 

Dive Insight:

In an increasingly mobile-first world, mobile video is where it's at, according to Smaato's findings. 

“Mobile video advertising is showing enormous growth potential, helping publishers to boost their monetization efforts and advertisers to engage their target audiences better,” Smaato CEO Ragnar Kruse told Mobile Advertising Watch.

For marketers looking to reach mobile users with video, the IAB recommends marketers develop video ads with smaller screens in mind. IAB research found that marketers should generally keep mobile video ads shorter than traditional ones, with shorter ads for smaller screens and longer ads for larger screens.

In particular, the IAB found that younger demographics preferred shorter videos, such as 10-second spots. With smartphones and social media, the millennial consumer's attention span for ads is shorter than for older demographics, who are more used to the traditional 30-second video ad format. 

But while video may be the killer content type for mobile, marketers have not yet shifted their budgets to mobile as consumers have.  Mary's Meekers' 2016 Internet Trends report revealed that consumers are spending 25% of their time on mobile, but marketers are only spending 12% of ad dollars on mobile. That 13% gap represents a $22 billion lost opportunity in U.S. advertising. Meeker's report predicted that advertising will move toward video, social, and data — three areas that are deeply tied to the growth of mobile.