'Net Features : mobile traffic

Mobile Traffic Increases, Sales Decrease

Allison Howen — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Mobile traffic continues to impress, as a new report from Affiliate Window reveals that the company saw an increase in mobile traffic across its network in February.

In fact, the report reveals that one in every five clicks originated from a mobile device during February, which is a considerable increase from last year when the company saw just 9.6 percent of total network traffic come through mobile devices.

However, despite the increase in mobile traffic, sales through mobile devices actually decreased in February, down to 13.7 percent from 13.97 percent in January. That being said, advertisers should remember that mobile visitors often times are using their devices to look up information such as the location of the nearest store, rather than using their devices to make purchases.

When breaking down mobile sales by device, the report unsurprisingly shows Apple devices drive the most conversions. In fact, during week 8, 59.23 percent of mobile sales originated from an iPad, while 19.83 percent of mobile sales originated from an iPhone and only 14.54 percent came from an Android device.

Other important data from Affiliate Window’s February Mobile Update reveals that even though there was a drop in mobile sales during February, overall conversion rates remained the same as January – at 3.43 percent. It is important to note, however, that according to the study, the drop off in the share of sales through mobile devices is due to an improvement in the conversion rates across desktops as opposed to a drop off in mobile conversion rates. Desktop conversion rates, for example, increased to 5.64 percent, while the conversion rates of iPads also increased to 5 percent. That said, the conversion rates of iPhone, Android and other devices remained consistent with January, while Blackberry conversion rates dropped to 8.29 percent.

Win the War Against Mobile Click Fraud

Michael Garrity — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:15:00 GMT

The rise of the mobile Web has been something of a headache for many advertisers and marketers, as it’s presented new problems with analytics and tracking that they must address, as well as re-presenting old concerns that they thought were long overcome.

One such issue is click fraud, which, while still a fringe problem on the Internet, has been mostly kept in check for years now thanks to various software and solutions that offer features created to combat it. Unfortunately, many mobile solutions aren’t as equipped to fight it, and as a result, mobile click fraud has seen a noticeable increase over the last few years. In fact, a recent Trademob study documented 10 million mobile ad clicks across 10 mobile networks and found that 40 percent of them were accidental or fraudulent.

To address this issue, mobile tracking platform iMobiTrax has released a handful of new features aimed at combating click fraud so that mobile-focused marketers and advertisers can improve their return on investment (ROI). It also included new traffic blocking rules, allowing users to set all rules to block, filter, active or inactive; they can even send all of the blocked clicks to a unique URL that they specify.

iMobiTrax lets its customers group and sort their data to immediately see where they are making and losing money, so that they can quickly increase their ROI and turn their focus to the devices, manufacturers, operating systems and ISPs or carriers that are actually helping them bring in money.

The announcement also introduced other new features added to the platform, including separate or multi-domain tracking, split testing options, the ability to track multiple offers, pass tracking tokens, weighted landing page options and the option to rotate both unlimited landing pages and unlimited offers.

Mobile Traffic Declines in July (And More Statistics)

Michael Garrity — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:30:00 GMT

Affiliate Window, one of the United Kingdom’s leading performance marketing networks, has unleashed upon the world its July report concerning mobile and m-commerce statistics.

Most curiously, the company found that the share of Web traffic through mobile devices actually dropped from over 12 percent in June to making up around just nine percent of total traffic in July. This isn’t terribly peculiar, as May saw a slight decrease, as well, following month-by-month increases for the first four months of the year.

On the upside, however, the volume of mobile clicks actually increased. And not only that, but the share of sales through mobile devices also rose, finally crossing the nine percent threshold at 9.42 percent. Ultimately, this figure, coupled with the drop in traffic, seems to show a closer alignment between mobile conversion rates and those of their desktop counterparts, as mobile conversion rates improved throughout July, increasing to 3.14 percent.

The report also breaks down mobile and m-commerce statistics by mobile device. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that Apple is (still) leading the pack, with the iPhone driving 38 percent of all mobile traffic by the end of the month. However, it’s not all sunshine for the brand, as iPad traffic actually ended up dropping below 40 percent. On the other hand, iPad sales reached a high of 63 percent of all mobile sales by the end of the month, and the iPhone ended up accounting for 24.87 percent.

Android devices saw traffic increases in July, with the number resting between 18 and 19 percent, up from June’s 17.5 percent. BlackBerry and “Other” devices both decreased, driving 1.5 and two percent of July’s mobile traffic, respectively. In terms of sales, Android saw another increase, ranging between 11.5 and 13 percent throughout the four weeks of July, while BlackBerry and “Other” devices both stayed below two percent.

From a year-to-date perspective, iPads have driven 57 percent of all mobile sales, with iPhones coming in second at 27 percent, and followed by Android (11 percent), BlackBerry (3 percent) and other devices (2 percent). Adding to this, Affiliate Window found that the iPhone, Android and “Other” devices allow showed an improvement in conversion rates in July; in fact, they were all almost identical at around 2.1 percent.

I think it’s fair to say that if you take anything away from this report, it’s not to put too much stock in the future of BlackBerry.