Using a mix of its own data and third party data, mobile ad personalization platform AppLovin is predicting that nearly 30 percent of Cyber Monday transactions this year will come on mobile devices. This is transactions — not traffic.
The awkwardly named Cyber-Monday has been the biggest online shopping day of the year in the US since 2010 according to comScore data. In 2013 Cyber Monday sales rang up roughly $2.3 billion according to Adobe.
AppLovin points out that in 2010 mobile transactions represented only 2 percent of Cyber Monday buying. However mobile commerce has been growing steadily despite considerable friction in the mobile shopping and checkout process.
Last week MarketLive reported that Q3 smartphone traffic to e-commerce sites grew by more than 62 percent and mobile commerce revenue grew 141 percent. An illustration of the remaining friction, smartphones drove 28 percent of traffic but only 11 percent of revenue. Tablets generated 15 percent of traffic and 13 percent of revenue.
Mobile Percentage of Cyber-Monday Sales
Many mobile-commerce sites remain awkward to use and frustrating to consumers. That may trigger use of competitors’ sites or consumer abandonment in many cases. Recently released research from Netbiscuits found that, in the aggregate, 91 percent of survey respondents in the multi-country study said they would turn to competitors upon having a bad mobile site experience.
Bad mobile experiences can not only cause lost sales but damage brand perception. And the costs of not being able to participate fully in mobile commerce are going to be painfully real this holiday season.
If Cyber Monday sales grow only slightly this year to, say, $2.5 billion AppLovin is arguing that US mobile transactions on that day could reach $750 million or more. Over the course of the full holiday shopping period mobile transactions could bring in billions of dollars to e-tailers.
Thus there are very real costs in not being able to participate fully in mobile commerce in 2014. Fully functioning mobile e-commerce sites and apps are no longer “nice to haves” but “must haves.”
AppLovin also explained that users are more engaged with ads on Cyber-Monday, observing that “there is a 20 percent increase in conversion from ads on Cyber Monday when compared to the aggregate regular Monday. In addition, the click rate is 10 percent higher on Cyber-Monday.”
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