The fourth quarter is always a wild ride with exhilarating highs and discouraging lows. We always find it interesting and educational to look-back as the dust settles to see how the market reacted to mobile digital spend and glean what we can learn moving forward. How did your inventory compare to the industry global average?

• Banner performance showed close ties to holiday spending, indicating more brand and holiday-dependent inventories.
• Yearly pricing highs peaked at 100% from the beginning of the quarter; increased app-usage swelled revenue to 3X growth on November 24th.
• Post-holiday spending was disappointing, combined with users opting to spend time off their phones led to a fall from Q4-highs starting December 24th.

• Overall reaction to market-spending was far less peaky than banners, pricing increased 36% at peak but increased usage saw revenue increase to almost 100% increase in revenue compared to quarter beginning numbers.
• Holidays—while playing part—didn’t see the massive market swings we saw on banners.

Timeline:

• September 1: Q4 started slower than years past with a full 15 days before we started to see any ramp on banners.
• By October 31st: (Halloween) CPMs and revenue spiked for many, with a holiday and month-end coming together.
• November 4th: An industry-wide dip in demand had the market worried that the ramp was a fluke but a few short-days saw a continuation of growth.
• November 15th: we were starting to get worried about growth, even going so far to publish a blog about the lack of jumps we were expecting to see.
• November 24th: Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday (November 27th) brought huge CPM increases— almost double the beginning of the quarter along with peak usage brought in a huge amount of revenue for the long holiday weekend.
• December 25th: All of December has been hit-or-miss– definitely unpredictable– over previous year. This year Christmas saw a sharp decrease in usage and pricing which continued to plummet until year-end. Not all good things can last it seems.