• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, July 21, 2015

A recent study by NinthDecimal, a mobile audience intelligence platform, revealed that advertisers purchased 11.5 times more impressions per mobile programmatic campaigns in Q1 2015 compared to the previous quarter.

Advertisers have been taking advantage of better audience measuring tools to target specific segments, and buying more impressions on average. Traditional companies are buying inventory in apps—especially mobile games. While in 2014, 80% of programmatic buys were banner ads, more mobile video ad inventory is becoming available for bids.

By a vast margin, technology and consumer packaged goods companies purchased the most ads, accounting for 92% of ad buys. During the holiday season in the previous quarter, retail, auto, and big box stores led mobile programmatic buying.

The most popular audience segments to target were tech enthusiasts, movie goers, parents of school-aged children, income, ethnicity, and healthy living.

In 2014, programmatic ad buying was reported to account for about one-fifth of the total spend on Internet ads– about $10 billion. That $10 billion is split between mobile and desktop and the divide is far from equal. Advertisers still struggle to track engagement across devices for more accurate engagement.

Mobile users spend about 80%-90% of their three daily hours of device time on mobile. More than one-fifth of all millennials access the Internet primarily through their mobile devices. It's expected more mobile programmatic buying will increase as users flock to devices and more sophisticated ads become available.