Tech and Finance Among Fast-Growing Mobile Ad Groups

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Technology and finance advertisers moved aggressively into mobile in Q3 2011.

According to mobile advertising platform Millennial Media's quarterly SMART Report, the technology vertical grew 687 percent year over year, while finance grew 356 percent. While tech is still a relatively small portion of the company's total ad traffic, its emergence highlights growing adoption of mobile media, according to Mack McKelvey, senior vice president, Millennial Media.

This chart, courtesy of Millennial, shows year-over-year spending growth by vertical, between Q3 2010 and Q3 2011: 

Finance became the company's top vertical for advertising for the first time last quarter. The report is based on data from Millennial's 23 billion monthly ad requests.

Thirty eight percent of the company's financial ad traffic came from insurance companies, followed by 22 percent for financial services such as investing or loans. Banks and credit cards each accounted for 18 percent of ads served.

In addition to banks pushing credit cards for back-to-school shopping, banks and insurance companies had a lot to talk to consumers about last quarter, including hurricanes, storms and earthquakes, McKelvey says.

"In some areas, the power was out for days, so mobile was the only way to reach people," McKelvey points out.

There are other contributing factors to the increase in financial-sector mobile advertising, according to Millennial Media. For example, 80 percent of people accessing financial information or apps via mobile own a smartphone, more than double the general mobile population. The mobile finance audience is also 76 percent more likely to own a tablet or e-reader.