The emergence of metrics for mobile ad campaigns provides a much-needed boost for advertisers in the region, especially since more consumers in Asia-Pacific than the US watch video daily on their mobile devices.

In this industry byliner, SpotX's Asia-Pacific director of demand Christopher Blok discusses the importance of dedicating focus for video ads, rather than as an offshoot from desktop campaigns. He also highlights nagging challenges mobile advertisers still need to overcome, including real-time tracking of campaigns and ad viewability.

The mobile screen: it's the most important screen in our lives and it's almost always within grasp. Asian consumers have a particularly close relationship with their phones. In developed countries, mobile devices are used for a wide range of tasks, while consumers in developing nations are leapfrogging desktop and tapping smartphones for more basic functionality.

Across both user groups, video is a rapidly growing feature. According to Nielsen, 41% of consumers in the Asia-Pacific region (twice as many as those in North America) watch video every day on their mobile devices.

The growth in mobile video consumption can be attributed to the availability of devices with larger screens, greater accessibility to high-speed connections, as well as faster processors, which can now be found across the region, even in less expensive mobile devices.

Advertising budgets, however, have yet to mirror the shift in consumption habits. At the half-year point, only 24% of video ad buy spend executed through the SpotX platform went to mobile campaigns.

More advertisers could place stronger emphasis on mobile in the planning phase. Publishers are working hard to help advertisers establish cross-screen strategies, but are finding it difficult to monetise audiences as successfully as they do on other screens.

Further challenges associated with tracking, measurement, and viewabilty also are holding back advertisers from buying mobile video inventory.

For a long time, advertisers have been unable to verify audience delivery of a campaign and web audience reporting platforms did not translate to mobile. This changed in June when comScore introduced vCE for mobile, giving the market access to the same metrics available on desktop and an unduplicated view of digital campaign performance.

To date, the lack of standard, third-party insight into mobile campaign delivery has slowed the mobile ad industry's growth. Now that the market can accurately measure viewability and monitor fraud, we expect mobile video spend – which has already shown strong growth this year – to shift into overdrive.

We've known, anecdotally, that mobile is more viewable than desktop. Also, according to a study conducted by Google in June, video viewability for mobile web clocked at more than 80%, compared to 53% for desktop.

With viewability currently a big concern for advertisers, mobile's superior performance on this attribute will be a strong selling point. SpotX's demand and supply partners now will be able to verify that campaigns are being seen by the right people in the right location and optimise the efficiency, reach, and performance of video placements.

In addition, new video units that don't require supporting video content, or out-stream ad units, are now available on mobile devices. These allow publishers to insert video ads into mobile and desktop pages that only play while on screen, guaranteeing 100% viewability. They can provide a greater revenue source than a standard MREC placement and offer a more engaging user experience.

While there are still challenges to overcome, such as MRAID (Mobile Rich-Media Ad Interface Definitions) compliance and cross-device tracking outside of Facebook, Apple, or Google, recent developments in measurement and ad products have given the industry a path forward to monetising mobile audiences.

The challenges mobile advertisers still need to overcome are becoming lesser hurdles, such as real-time tracking of campaigns and ensuring buys are in-demo where not all publishers can share audience data, making vertical targeting only across URLs about as granular as it gets.

Perhaps the biggest barrier is what I describe as, a 'comfort factor' or the lack of one. To get the most out of a completely different medium, campaigns need to be planned for. Yet, most buyers plan mobile as a percentage of campaign spend, rather than focus on such efforts separately to desktop.

More forward-thinking advertisers are starting to evolve. We're starting to see sophisticated ad buyers allocate spend for video campaigns across all screens, as more recognise the importance of tablets, smartphones, and even connected TV. They're realising that video is video, no matter where it's delivered, and are planning for the audience and experience of every platform.