• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 11, 2012

Ads featuring video and rich media as well as location-based units are helping drive demand and increased value for mobile advertising. That’s according to a new report from mobile exchange Nexage analyzing trends and activity on its network in the second half of 2012.

The company reports a 24% monthly increase in ad spending from May to October in its real-time bidding (RTB) marketplace, which handles 20 billion impressions a month and boasts more than 200 buyers. Lifting spending are holiday season campaigns driving in-store sales as well as m-commerce.

Nexage points out that the increased buying activity comes from a broad base of sources, including DSPs, ad networks, app advertisers, online media companies and agencies.

Higher-value ad formats in particular are drawing buyers. Nexage noted a 30% per month increase in demand for location-enabled ads as marketers focus on local and hyper-local campaigns. Likewise, publishers using the exchange are seeing a 33% monthly rise in location-based impressions.

Separately, publishers are offering more rich media and video ad placements, capitalizing on growing adoption of smartphones and tablets, with the latter providing a more conducive platform for video ads. That push has helped to increase rich media and video ad impressions 19% per month, with those ad types now accounting for 26% of exchange traffic.

Growing use of both location-related and rich media units is also helping to boost ad pricing, with average eCPMs up 44% from the second quarter to the third quarter. Location-focused ads command premiums of two to five times average CPMs, while those for rich media/video ads are five to ten times higher, according to Nexage.

Mobile RTB made up 26% of all mobile ad spending, with that proportion doubling over the last six month on 37% monthly growth. RTB auctions increased 33%, while bids per auction were up 96% in the same period. Nexage expect more aggressive strategies from brands and publishers will lead to accelerating mobile ad growth next year.