Q3 Top Digital Advertisers

Announcing our Q3 top digital advertiser rankings for 2015 across desktop, mobile and video. The emergence of fantasy sports draft companies with aggressive cross-channel advertising strategies landed one of the bigger players in our Q3 top ten on mobile web. Other highlights include the addition of two major Food & Drink companies on the top video advertisers list and the growing usage of exchanges for purchasing mobile impressions.

See below for the purchase channel breakdown of the top 500 desktop and video advertisers, as well as the top advertising categories. Download all of Q3's top digital advertisers, including top direct advertisers, here.

The Rise and Fall of DraftKings, Inc.

You may not have been familiar with fantasy sports draft companies such as DraftKings, Inc. and FanDuel until this year, but both have been around for quite some time. Founded in 2012, DraftKings, Inc. has steadily upped their digital ad plans over the years growing from 25 unique creatives released in 2012 on an average of 4 sites per day to 501 unique creatives released so far in 2015 on an average of 28 sites per day. During Q3, DraftKings, Inc. released 283 unique creatives, with 199 released in September alone. Inking partnership deals with mlb.com helped DraftKings, Inc. secure the #1 top direct desktop and mobile advertiser ranking on our Top September Advertisers Report. Their direct push during the last month of the quarter was enough to move them into the top 10 direct advertisers for desktop and mobile in Q3. The company's aggressive push may have been too much as the fantasy sports sector faces scandal and scrutiny finishing out the year, even pushing the company to scale down advertising efforts.

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Source: Pathmatics US Desktop data, 7/1/15-9/30/15.

Food & Drink Advertisers Debut on Video Top 10 List

Mirroring our Q2 findings, Food & Drink was the number one video advertising category again during Q3. With that, one fast-food chain and a candy company landed in the top 10 video advertiser rankings by impression volume for the first time. Buying direct also continues to be the most popular purchase channel amongst the top 500 video advertisers, climbing to 72% from 64% in Q2. Food & Drink advertisers purchased direct 63% of the time targeting top sites such as youtube.com, aol.com, mlb.com, hulu.com and amazon.com.

Exchange Use Growing on Mobile

The convenience of exchanges has grown the popularity of the purchase channel from 1% to 10% YOY. In 2014, mobile purchases were split almost entirely between direct (49%) and ad networks (46%) with Advertising.com being the most used ad network delivering 24% of impressions. The rise of exchanges in 2015 has cut ad network usage by 11%. Advertising.com's impression share dropped to 18% making way for AppNexus to deliver 10% of the mobile impressions for the top 500 advertisers.

Source: Pathmatics US Mobile data, 7/1/14-9/30/14 and 7/1/15-9/30/15.

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