April's Top 5 Mobile Advertising Spenders

Mobile advertising is still fighting for share of budget amongst the top digital advertisers as brands focus on display and video, but the device-type is still bringing in cash. The top 500 mobile ad spenders invested over $75M on mobile placements during the month of April led by Clarus Commerce, Procter & Gamble, and TurboTax. As the Tax Season deadline approached in early April, TurboTax turned up the awareness campaigns to reach those last-minute tax filers.

Direct buys dominated mobile buying overall, consuming 77% of the total spend for the device-type and returning 39% of the mobile impression share. Google AdX+AdSense was the top partner on mobile, raking in 7% of mobile spend for the month of April while garnering 15% of the impressions. Amazon’s mobile ad network took in 4% of spend share, yet delivered 17% of the mobile impressions. All in all, ad networks accounted for the majority of mobile impressions during the month with 43% share. Direct buys followed, bringing in 39% of impressions.

See how the top five mobile ad spenders allocated their budgets, the percentage of spend that was directed to mobile, top sites, and buying partners. To download the entire April Top Advertisers report for 2017 detailing the top spenders and advertisers by impression volume across display, mobile, and video, click here.

1. Clarus Commerce, LLC

Clarus Commerce is an audience platform management company that works exclusively with Walmart to drive performance through email capture. Over the month of April, the brand invested 86% of their digital budget on mobile placements, spending over $2.9M across six sites. All of Clarus Commerce’s mobile ads were purchased through direct buys targeting Walmart, Kohls, Redox, CVS, Sears, and Food.com. The brand is also the top mobile ad spender so far for 2017.

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2. Procter & Gamble

The advertising giant was the second top spender on mobile web during the month of April, and is also in the same position year-to-date. Procter & Gamble invested only 14% of their digital ad spend during April to mobile placements, releasing 290 unique creatives. The brand’s $2.7M mobile budget garnered over 280M across an average of 258 sites per day. P&G primarily leaned on direct buys to target top sites Walmart, Target, Coupons.com, AARP, and Amazon.

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3. TurboTax

After a brief hiatus in March, TurboTax returned with serious ad spend on mobile during the month of April to drive awareness up until Tax Day. The brand’s top spend spike was on April 9th, with the second top spike occurring on April 15th. TurboTax released 196 mobile creatives, dishing out $1.6M on mobile advertising during the month - accounting for 14% of their digital budget. The tax software company is also the third top advertiser for the current year, preferring direct placements on top sites MSN, Yahoo!, Overstock, SmartAsset, and Answers.

4. Manchester by the Sea Movie

The movie was released in November of last year, but Amazon Studios dumped major cash into the film’s campaign to promote the movie on Amazon Prime. Over $1M was spend on mobile advertising for the film, 23% of the movie’s digital budget during the month of April. Ten unique creatives were released across an average of five sites per day. The top site for the film was - no surprise - Amazon, and nearly all of the ad spend was funneled through Amazon’s ad network.

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5. Comcast Corporation

Comcast invested 16% of their digital ad spend during April on mobile web advertising - to the tune of just over $1M. Hitting an average of 67 sites per day, 266 unique mobile creatives were detected over the thirty day period promoting mostly Xfinity. Splitting their spend between direct buys and ad network placements, 44% of the brand’s spend went to Amazon’s ad network. Because of that, Amazon was the top site, followed by Fandango, RottenTomatoes, Weather.com, and RotoWorld.