Insights from Opera Mediaworks

What time of year is the biggest for mobile shopping?

Globally, the shopping audience is largest in February – that is when the percentage of shoppers among total users
is the highest. However, the greatest number of unique shoppers as a percentage of total users is typically in June.

These numbers vary largely across geographies. In Asia, the largest audience is in March, closely followed by July.
Because Indonesia heavily influences our traffic volume, and this year Ramadan started in late June and ended in late
July, patterns were driven in a large part by this calendar event.

As expected, the Christmas season is the most active time for shopping in Europe, the United States and Latin America

Western Europe has a noticeably strong preference for shopping during November and December.

Germany in particular shows a large increase in the number of shoppers during this period, experiencing an increase of over 28% in the number of mobile shoppers from its annual average. That average hits its low each May.

In the United States, the period from November through February sees the largest shopping audience, with increases of over 15% from annual averages in both the shopping audience and total shopper volume.

The surge in the shopping audience reveals Americans’ mobile shopping habits as being highly influenced by annual seasons. While Germans might jump forward in unique visitors to shopping sites, the audience metric focuses more on sustained usage of shopping sites over a lengthier period of time.

Top shopping sites for mobile consumers

Amazon leads the field of shopping-oriented mobile websites, particularly in Europe and in the United States. There are, however, some relative newcomers who have taken strong leadership positions in Asia, such as Flipkart and Berniaga. In Latin America, MercadoLibre has emerged as a top mobile shopping destination. Alibaba is also among the growing sites we are watching as mobile shopping marketplaces mature.

Who are the biggest U.S. retail advertisers on mobile?

As we head into the holiday season in the United States, some big-brand advertisers are already making high-volume buys in mobile to capture mobile consumers’ attention.

So far in the fourth quarter of 2014, these are the top U.S. retail advertisers in mobile.

Sunday is the strongest mobile shopping day

As we approach the holiday season in the United States, traffic data from the first two weeks of the November reveals that mobile shoppers are focusing their activity on Sunday, with Friday as the least popular time to visit shopping sites.

As online shopping continues to grow as a percentage of all shopping activity, we expect mobile activity of all types to accelerate between now and the new year.

ABOUT THE REPORT

Mobile browsing data in this report is aggregated information from Opera’s servers between November 2013 and November 2014. Advertiser data is pulled from campaigns being executed on over 17,500 mobile sites and apps on the Opera Mediaworks mobile ad platform, reaching 800 million users with more than 65 billion impressions a month.