Smaato’s data covers 40 mobile ad networks that collectively served over six billion ad requests in April, the month in which the research was done. While feature phone and iPhone click through both increased, Symbian is still weirdly way out in the lead (as it was globally, though not by nearly as great a margin).
GigaOm suggests that it’s because Symbian has been around longer as a platform, and thus both advertisers and developers have had more time to refine its mobile ad experience. In any event, Symbian’s dominance here is a reminder that despite the hoopla surrounding Apple’s expensive iAd platform, there are plenty of advertisements on other platforms reaching other eyeballs, and, especially in Symbian’s case, plenty of users clicking on them. [GigaOM]
Chris
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 6:42 PMIs it just me, but does it seem like the phone OSs which would be owned by more gullible (read: younger, not as tech savvy, buying more into hype without research) have a higher click-thru rate. Those mostly owned by those who know what they are doing on their phones (BlackBerry owners, Palm, Android) have a lesser click-through index.
j
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 11:07 PMI somewhat agree Chris. And since Symbian phones are available much cheaper than other OS’s, more youngsters would surely be using them.
Mark Newstead
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 3:02 PMThe clue is in the “few and far between” Symbian incidence rate remark.
To truly understand their click through rate, and why it might be so much higher we need to know two essential things. Was this a random survey or a self responding survey? Even if the latter was the response rate from Symbion and other platform users, in proportion to their actual presence in the market?
You cannot form meaningful hypothesis on the whys of any reported phenomenon, without eliminating possible sources of both response and non response bias in the survey quoted. To be fair to Smaato, who are credited with conducting this study, I have penned this post without having yet gone to their web site to find out more. It’s just that I find that because it’s a survey finding, it sets us thinking about the implications without first asking about possible reasons for why the data is the way it is.
Mark Newstead FAMSRS