Apple and Samsung are locked in a two horse race to dominate the smartphone advertising market, with nine of the top ten devices in terms of mobile ad impressions attributed to the two manufacturers.
Adfonic, which serves over 100 billion global ad impressions a month, drew the data from its global ad network, and claims in its latest Global AdMetrics report that both firms increased their market share over Q3.
Apple and Samsung devices accounted for nine of the top ten by share of ad impressions, and the split between mobile and tablet was still heavily weighted towards mobile, 89% to 11%.
However, despite the increasing popularity of new Samsung devices, and the new iPhone 5 yet to break into the top ten, Apple continued to widen its lead, with iOS devices holding the top three spots and over a quarter of all global mobile ad impressions made on iPhones.
RIM was the only other manufacturer to make it into the top ten list, with its Blackberry Curve taking 3% of ad impressions. New devices are surprisingly quick to make their way up the standings. The Galaxy S3, released by Samsung in July, only took a matter of months to make it to sixth in the table.
In terms of platform distribution, Android dominates, with 45% of all ad impressions, followed by iOS with 37%; though in South America and Africa, iOS remains the dominant platform, increasing its lead over the last quarter.
The report makes interesting reading for anyone looking to plan their next mobile ad campaign, it showed that though the under 20 age group was far more likely to click through on an ad, it was the over 30 age group that was the most likely to convert, and those aged 40-50 provided earnings per thousand impressions (eCPMs) roughly 20% above average.
Adfonic recently introduced a real time bidding (RTB) model, allowing advertisers to automate the purchase of impression in a similar way to automated stock-trading programmes. The system “provided significantly stronger results across every Adfonic channel, both for advertisers and publishers”, the firm said.
The channel with the strongest RTB performance was Social Networking, which generated clickthrough rates (CTRs) of 127% more than the average for non-RTB inventory, and effective eCPMs 663% higher than the average for non-RTB.
“The fact that we’re seeing significantly stronger performance from RTB across all channels is an indication of how the mobile display advertising industry is changing,” said Adfonic CEO Victor Malachard. “Programmatic mobile buying is proving itself through concrete results, and RTB will emerge as the dominant way to buy mobile media.”
