Commentary

Click-Through Rate Shares Top Spot As Favorite Mobile Measurement, Even If You Don't Know How

If you go to an industry conference, you might leave the room thinking click-through rates don’t matter and cookies are dead -- that there are new, better ways to measure success.

Problem is, you might not know which tracking technologies your company is using to measure campaigns. But that’s okay, because the people trading on your behalf must know, right?

For the most part, yes. But not all do.

When it comes to mobile campaigns, DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) is the number one technology used, followed by (in no particular order) Mediamind, Adform, Ad-X, Flurry, Hasoffers, and some combination of cookies and pixels.

After that, trading desks use a variety of technologies, including their own proprietary tech, AdOcean, Medialets, Adelphic, or various SDKs.

Included in the group is “Don’t know,” which is either a new tracking technology or the most humble answer ever given in the world of ad tech. That answer is also symbolic of the confusing landscape.

The data and responses come from Rubicon Project’s Mobile Buyer Survey 2014. The company surveyed 39 representatives from trading desks across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the U.S.

Excluding “Don’t know,” there were 17 different tracking technologies listed. Rubicon Project reasons in its report that “the broad range of responses may be indicative of a still nascent market -- that like the early days of desktop advertising, mobile still lacks a robust cookie or cookie-like solution, making accurate campaign reporting and true frequency capping a challenge. As a result, a number of different solutions are present in today’s marketplace.”

While click-through rates are still the most common form of measurement in mobile advertising, they now share that top spot. Click-through rates are used to measure mobile campaigns 69% of the time, same as cost-per action or cost-per install.

“Reach” is a measurement used in 26% of campaigns, which Rubicon Project calls out as higher-than-expected, theorizing that it “may suggest agency trading desks are beginning to use mobile for branding campaigns, or perhaps for campaigns that incorporate a combination of direct response and branding elements.”

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