Admob, which was recently acquired by Google is always a great place to get useful stats on the mobile landscape. Marketers looking to understand the viability of a new smartphone platform in terms of potential ad revenue should always keep the Admob numbers in mind. I do have my questions about the validity of the Admob numbers. Nearly all of the ads it serves to smartphones are centered around Android and especially the iPhone. Therefore it doesn’t give the greatest all-around snapshot of the mobile landscape. Still, it provides insight into the long-term given the fact that smartphones such as Android and the iPhone represent the future of mobile devices and especially the future of the mobile Web and how to monetize it.
This months stats pointed out two very interesting items. Firstly, they noted that iPod touch numbers doubled after Christmas morning. This is to be expected (it also happened last year), but what are the implications? Publishers should understand that when building an application they must keep in mind the regularly offline iPod touch users. Spreed takes this into consideration when developing apps with our offline reading mode feature. All content is downloaded into the device when it has connectivity and reports usage back to the server when it reaches its next connection point. This means that iPod touch users (an increasingly growing market) can still use the app, download the content when in their Wi-fi network and read it on the go.
The second notable stat from this months report is that the iPhone accounted for 54% of all smartphone requests. Although it is important to take into consideration a multiple platform advertising strategy, it is clear that the iPhone is currently the best platform for displaying and seeing a return on your investment.
December 2009 Mobile Metrics Report
Today we released the December edition of our Mobile Metrics report, our monthly look at the data flowing through our network. This month we look at several key metrics including manufacturer share, operating system share, top devices, and top smartphones for each region in our network. At a glance, the data shows large regional differences in the devices that are accessing the mobile web.
