Audi, Peugeot and Volkswagen have topped research by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB), which found the three auto brands are the top performing on mobile in the UK.

The Mobile Automotive Audit studied the top 50 automotive brands (such AA, Audi, BMW, Ford and Volkswagen) that spent the most on advertising in October 2014 in the UK, to gauge their uptake across the mobile channel.

Several different KPIs were checked, including whether the brand had a mobile optimised site, tablet specific site, responsive web design, mobile optimised search and an app.

The audit revealed that one in three of the top spending brands have a responsive web design site. 80% have a mobile app, with 74% both an app and a mobile optimised site. Only 2% of the top spenders had no mobile presence.

IAB’s head of mobile Alex Kozloff said: “The results from this audit are really encouraging. It’s great to see a sector that is performing so well across mobile. Several of these brands have really embraced the medium with 80 per cent having run a mobile campaign in the last 6 months.”

Mobile search was a key objective in the audit, encouragingly, 66% of auto brands were optimising their search for mobile, with 29% of the brands optimising their search implementing a click to call / get directions functionality.

Some of the star performing brands that scored the highest across the KPIs, were AA, Audi, Kia and Peugeot. (Source: The Drum)

The 12 KPI’s that the mobile score was based on were:

The brand has a mobile friendly site (defined as either a separate mobile site, or responsive web design)
The brand has a tablet friendly site (defined as either a separate mobile site, or responsive web design)
The desktop site does not include flash when served on a tablet device
The brand auto redirects to their mobile site from position one in organic mobile search
The brands paid search is optimised for mobile
The paid search link pushes through to an optimised site
The paid search creative included a mobile ad extension
The paid search creative had been tailored for mobile
The brand has a mobile IOS app
The brand has a mobile Google Play app
The brand has a tablet IOS app
The brand has a tablet Google Play app