8 Big Fat Stats From Advertising Week 

Kik and ESPN show that mobile is gradually taking over digital By Christopher Heine

• October 3, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT
• Technology

This mobile-social app is killing it with Gen Y right now.

Advertising Week wrapped up last night after four days of marketers discussing industry issues while revealing data that show how certain ideas are working. Below are eight impressive stats that caught our attention.

1. During the height of popularity for Funny or Die's Between Two Ferns video for the Affordable Healthcare Act, said Chris Bruss, vp of branded entertainment for the comedy site, the clip was responsible for 40 percent of the traffic flowing to Healthcare.gov. Of course, it helps to have President Obama and Zach Galifianakis being genuinely funny for six minutes.

2. ESPN's exec vp of print and digital media John Kosner said 60 percent of digital traffic comes via smartphones and tablets. He added that he expects big things from mobile ads down the road.

3. If you are older than 30, you probably haven't heard of Kik. The mobile-social app is reeling in more than 250,000 new subscribers every day. Yep, every day.

4. What's more, Devrin Carlson-Smith, Kik's vp of strategic development, said 40 percent of U.S. citizens aged 13 to 25 have been on the mobile-social platform, which now has 160 million users.

5. According to Mercedes-Benz, the combination of Facebook and Instagram ads is the sweet spot for social marketing. The brand says that people who saw branding-focused ads on Instagram and Facebook generated 54 percent more click-throughs to Mercedes' website than a control group that was not served an advertisement.

6. Snapchat is far from an America-only phenomena. In fact, it disclosed that less than half of its 100 monthly active users are in the U.S.

7. Heineken recently went from zero awareness in a region of the U.S. to 23 percent awareness due to mobile advertising alone.

8. Roughly 60 percent of Pandora's likes—or thumbs, as the popular digital radio player calls them—in August came from millennials.

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