Smaato Metrics: Android crunches Apple in mobile advertising performance across the globe

MobileBeat, San Francisco, CA – July 13, 2010 – Today, Smaato Inc., the leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company revealed data (metrics. smaato.com), looking at the global mobile advertising market in terms of click through rates and ad network fill rates for June.

The Smaato Metrics for June show further significant increases by Android in global click through rates (CTR), while leaders Symbian and Feature Phones both suffer a dip in CTR Index. Smaato serves over 8 million ad requests in its network of more than 6,000 registered mobile publishers and over 40 mobile ad networks.

Highlight: Click Through Rates USA

In the US, Smaato’s metrics reveal that while Symbian still dominates the region in terms of CTR (and despite small market share of handsets), Android has closed the gap with a CTR Index of 192 (118 in May), while Apple iOS drops down to fifth place in the US with a CTR Index of 73.

Worldwide CTR Index (Click Through Rate) by Handset Operating System

The performance of mobile operating systems regarding the click through rates (CTR) again shows Symbian and Feature Phones on top worldwide. They both dropped in comparison to May, but are still leading the performance metrics compared to the other operating systems. Symbian achieved a CTR Index of 144 (159 in May) and Feature Phones came to 135 (147 in May).

Android made the largest gains in the CTR Index this month, as it climbed above Apple, to third place with an Index of 58, compared to 40 in May. Interestingly, while Symbian and Feature Phones dipped, Android, iPhone, Palm and BlackBerry all saw increases.

The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100.


Monthly Comparison: CTR Performance Worldwide

Symbian remains the leading OS in terms of click through rates worldwide, this month with almost three times the click through rate of iPhone. Putting this into perspective, we have to consider the sheer number of Symbian devices compared to Apple devices, but it should again also serve as further proof to advertisers that the iPhone is far from the be-all and end-all in mobile advertising.

Fill Rate Worldwide

The Smaato Metrics demonstrate the performance of mobile ad networks globally and the fill rate is measured as the percentage of ads delivered per ad request and varies by different factors, like country, device and content type.

The ad networks are not published in the monthly Smaato metrics, but are revealed in the dashboard of registered Smaato publishers reporting and analytics tools.

After three months in decline, the fill rates of the global top 10 ad networks have recovered slightly, climbing to an average of 22%. However, in June, there were only four ad networks performing above this average. The top performing ad network lost 40 percentage points in comparison to May and in June only had a fill rate of 56%.

These monthly fluctuations help to prove that an ad network aggregation system can help partners achieve the best possible return and the highest possible fill rate, across the globe.

Mobile Advertising Spotlight: USA vs. South Africa

As the world’s eyes turned to South Africa for the FIFA World Cup, Smaato turned spotlights on the USA and South Africa. For the second time now, it has compared how two of the biggest mobile advertising markets line up against each other in terms of operating system click through rates and ad network fill rates.

Click Through Rates

The differences in CTRs in the USA and South Africa are apparent from the charts above. In the USA Symbian made further small gains and is still dominating the market with a CTR Index of 329 (316 in May), although on a small volume. Its closest rival Android made a huge increase in volume as well with an Index of 192 (118 in May), stretching further ahead of rival Apple, which dropped down to fifth place with 73 (compared to 111 in May).

In comparison to the USA, the different operating systems in South Africa are much closer together. Feature Phones top the CTR Index with 110 (108 in May), but the range only differs from 34 (Blackberry) to 75 (iPhone/iPod Touch). Palm is left out of this graphic, as the number of users is too small in South Africa.

Fill Rates: USA vs. South Africa

The average fill rates decreased in both countries from May to June: in the USA the average dropped by 11 percentage points (from 42% to 31%); in South Africa the fill rate decreased 21 percentage points from 72% to 51% in. Despite the drops, both countries stay well above the worldwide average of 22%.


Mobile Advertising Spotlight: Europe

In Europe, Windows Phones increased its lead over its competition with a CTR Index of 205 (157 in May). All other operating systems saw increases in CTR Index, apart for BlackBerry, which dropped by 16 points, from 91 in May to 75 in June. Android’s CTR Index remains the lowest in Europe, but it has closed the gap on BlackBerry.

In Europe the average fill rate rose again to 42% (36% in May and 25% in April). Europe’s fill rate is almost double the worldwide average of 22% and for the first time it’s better than the US fill rate of 31%. Aside from the top performing ad network, which dropped 10 percentage points, all other ad networks improved fill rates from May to June.

Ad Network Response Time worldwide

Smaato has taken another look at the response time of the top-performing ad networks in the Metrics for June 2010. The top 15 ad networks show a broad spectrum of performance.

The fastest response time in June was measured at 27 milliseconds, from 39 milliseconds in May. The fastest responding ad network is more than twice as fast as the second quickest, with 66 milliseconds. The gap between the top 13 ad networks and AN14 and AN15 are significantly higher.

Publishers should consider response times when adding several ad networks within a page load and therefore an allotted time to fill the ad space reserved.

This is a significant consideration for mobile publishers as for them, the best user-experience comes with the fastest loading time of a mobile web site or for in-app advertising. If an ad is requested from a mobile ad network and no ad is available, then a faster response time allows sending this request to one or more ad networks for a chance to get an ad delivered.

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators. More than 6,000 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 220+ countries and Smaato is managing 8 billion ad requests per month.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of 40 leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was recently named a “company to watch” by Financial Analyst company GP Bullhound, among other awards.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany and the Asia-Pacific presence of Smaato has been established in Singapore.

Harald Neidhardt
CMO & Co-Founder
harald@smaato.com
twitter: @hneidhardt

Neil Robertson
IF Communications
+44 7739322503
neil@if-communications.com
twitter: @neil_robertson

Smaato Inc.
3 Lagoon Drive, Suite 170
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Phone (USA): +1 (650) 286 11 98
Phone (Europe): +49 (40) 3480 9490

www.smaato.com
twitter:@smaato
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This release was published on openPR.