• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, October 13, 2015

Publisher-facing ad platform PubMatic released its Quarterly Mobile Index this week, showing five key trends in the growth of mobile advertising.

As different disparate elements of the market come together — a combination of an increased number of mobile optimized sites, new mobile opportunities in emerging markets, expanding mobile opportunities in mature markets, mobile users surpassing desktop users globally and premium private marketplace (PMP) performance — the mobile “tipping point” appears to have been reached.

Mobile CPMs are experiencing faster growth and have already surpassed desktop CPMs by 34%. This is significant, says PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel, because there has been a history of reports showing exactly the opposite. Mobile saw a 12% year-over-year (YOY) growth compared to desktop’s 10% YOY.

Advertisers are learning how to use the wealth of data mobile provides, especially location data and user ID, to better target consumers. Mobile video and rich media also contribute to the higher CPMs, both of them having higher CPMs than static banners.

Globally, there is ample opportunity in every market for mobile—the more established markets in the U.S. and Europe have scale that Latin American and Asia Pacific don’t have, while those emerging markets have mobile-first/only access to digital content, and high levels of mobile penetration.

LATAM and APAC saw a decline in CPMs (6% and 17%, respectively) but also saw massive YOY increase in monetized mobile impressions (736% and 461%, respectively).

Monetized mobile impressions on Apple apps saw an increase, while mobile Web CPMs also rose 48% due to better optimization of mobile Web sites across the board. Many programmatic companies have not seen a similarly high increase in demand for inventory, but Goel says that as consumption patterns change, so to will inventory buys.

Finally, private marketplaces were shown to have five-to-six times higher CPMs than open marketplaces. Their transparent buying process and access to premium inventory  “makes a strong case for publishers that are considering selling inventory on private marketplaces,” states the index.