Research company Nielsen says mobile apps are on the rise, with consumers happy to use ad-supported apps which are useful to them.
Head of the company’s media industry group Monique Perry says sites such as Carsales.com.au have captured incremental consumer touch-points for engagement by By providing high-quality content on both mobile website and app – giving consumers a choice of how to access it – Carsales has seen engagement levels soar.
More than a quarter (26 per cent) of their online user sessions last month came directly from usage of their mobile app, with 57 per cent of their total user sessions coming from a mobile or tablet device – meaning only 43 per cent of content was accessed on a laptop or desktop.
Perry says the first look at the results through carsales.com.au reinforces the industry’s need for this level of insight and is the next step in providing measurement across mobile-based content, following the introduction of device reporting in Nielsen Market Intelligence last year.
“Among mobile users, the preference is for ad-supported apps that are free to download, rather than paid apps that are ad-free,” she says.
Further, branded apps that offer utility hold strong potential. Forty-five per cent of mobile users say they would download an app from a company or brand if it was useful or entertaining while 29 per cent felt they would not download a branded app because it was perceived as simply advertising.
This reinforces the reach potential that in-app advertising can incrementally deliver, while also balancing the end-user needs of relevant and engaging app content.
Right: carsales.com.au total sessions by device/app in March 2014 ('App’ is an aggregation of all app sessions across all iOS, Android and Windows devices for both ‘mobile’ and ‘tablet’. ‘Tablet’ is sessions via web browser only and ‘Mobile’ is sessions via web browser only)