Whoa! Android Drops 50% In Worldwide Ad-Serving Index
Well this is a bit surprising to hear (and, honestly, a little difficult to digest). Smaato, a worldwide mobile advertising vendor, saw Android take a huge plunge in how many ads have been served (and, more weightedly, clicked through) over the past month. Globally, Android dipped ~50% and landed into 5th place, with Symbian remaining the top ad server.
I wanted to get an idea of what these numbers actually mean (truly, they can’t reflect overall marketshare) and here’s the skinny: Smaato conducts their study based on 36 mobile ad networks that made up over 4-billion requests by 3,300 publishers. It all sounds like reliable data (I’m sure there can’t be a huge amount of mobile ad networks not being accounted for out there).
Feature phones are to blame (if you can really be mad at them about that). Even the iPhone OS saw a similar dip in their index, and Symbian reported a relatively smaller decline. As feature phones become more capable and more affordable – and as more people use their cell phones for things other than talking (who does that anymore?) – ad metrics for smartphones will continue to suffer in their place.
What does all of this spell for Android? Nothing, I think. Competitors are facing similar woes and it’s all due to the resurgence of feature phone web-browsing (and the ads that are served to those users). The fact that everyone else suffered a drop in mobile ad index-ranking means that the smartphone market itself most likely hasn’t budged much at all. Don’t forget that this also has nothing to do with if users are actually browsing less on any one platform: ad-blockers and reluctance to click on ads all play a factor here. It’s easy to panic when looking at a bunch of numbers – just as I almost did when reading this report – but there truly is nothing to see here.
Now, when a retail report regarding unit purchases releases and Android has dipped 50% in just two months’ time, it’ll be time to panic. Until then, head over to Cellular-News for the full details.