• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, February 21, 2017

With header bidding nearly de rigueur  in the world of ad tech, mobile  monetized header bidding impressions increased 50 x year-over-year in Q4 2016, according to,PubMatic’s “Quarterly Mobile Index, Q4 2016."

The marketing automation platform company said it conducted a full-year analysis of billions of digital impressions that flow through the PubMatic platform.

Among the report's key findings :

--Monetized mobile impression volumes transacted via header bidding rose each quarter in 2016, nearly doubling between Q3 and Q4.

--Header-bidding-enabled impressions represented 75% of PubMatic’s total available impression pool by the end of 2016.

--Mobile private marketplace (PMP) impression volume grew more than 200% in Q4 2016, and eCPMs nearly doubled. PubMatic attributed this to media buyers’ shift to programmatic transactions throughout 2016.

--In Q4, mobile PMPs’ monetized inventory volume rose 200 +% year-over-year. The mobile Web helps fuel mobile PMP volume, accounting for 75% of mobile impressions globally in 2016.

--The automotive and technology verticals drove mobile PMP spend during the holiday shopping season. Mobile PMP impressions for both verticals grew more than 350% year-over-year. And during the Q4 holiday season, mobile eCPMs for automotive PMPs grew 24% year-over-year, and mobile eCPMs for technology PMPs grew 108% year-over-year.

--Mobile app monetization reduced the impression volume gap with mobile web while achieving significantly higher eCPMs. Outside of key social networking apps that dominate mobile consumers’ time, the mobile web continued to offer the leading source of monetization for publishers in mobile, representing 66% of mobile impression volume in 2016.

--In 2016, eCPMs for app inventory garnered a 59% premium over the mobile Web, and mobile app paid impression volume increased 21%. Overall, in 2016 the gap between mobile Web and mobile app volume shrank, moving from 77% mobile Web in Q1 to 60% Web in Q4. PubMatic expects this gap to to diminish over the course of 2017.

--Android mobile app inventory volumes caught up with iOS in 2016 and will likely surpass iOS in 2017. Android app eCPMs improved by 79% in Q4 2016 and the growth led to global Android app eCPMs surpassing their iOS counterparts in Q4 for Q1 in the past two years. Apple inventory saw price increases, with ePCMs rising 5% year-over-year.

--Mobile eCPMs rose significantly year-over-year across all global regions, with the Americas representing the largest opportunity (8x in EMEA for eCPMs increases and 14x in APAC for eCPM increases). The EMEA region experienced the highest annual growth rate in mobile inventory price globally, with eCPMs rising 122% in Q4 2016.