Android least valuable platform for advertisers – Opera

Opera, the popular browser for mobile devices, has released its State of Mobile Advertising report, in which Android as a platform is deemed lagging behind in revenues from advertising compared with arch-rival Apple. What’s even more interesting is that Android has even fallen behind BlackBerry in terms of revenue potential per user.
According to the report, iOS leads in terms of traffic and advertising revenue, at 46.37% and 58.40% share, respectively. Android follows with 25.66% in traffic and 16.79% share in revenue. But what’s interesting here is that when it comes to cost per viewer, Android lags behind Blackberry.
Apple gets a $1.64 effective CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). Meanwhile, BlackBerry follows closely with $1.06. Android gets a measly $0.88, which is less than the BlackBerry platform.
This means that for advertisers, BlackBerry is more valuable than Android, because they earn more per eyeball. Perhaps this has something to do with the BlackBerry’s primary market, which  is supposedly enterprise. But with the emerging market starting to be the focus of RIM’s marketing campaign of late, maybe that’s about to change soon.

Here are a few other observations:

• Mobile apps are a big earner of advertising dollars. We know that mobile users are increasingly shifting toward apps rather than mobile web. It only makes sense that advertisers should target app users, too.
• Mobile apps have generated 73% of the ad network’s revenues. About 80% of traffic came from mobile apps.
• Opera is set to generate $400 million in ad revenue for mobile publishers, which is a 40% growth from 2011 ad revenues.
• Opera is quite a popular platform in emerging markets, because of its ability to reduce data charges through compression.
• Opera says users from the UK are four times more likely to use BlackBerry devices than the rest of the world.
• The iPhone is the single biggest source of ad traffic and ad revenue for Opera’s platform. However, the iPad gives the most value for advertisers, at $4.42 e-CPM.

You can check out the full report at the source link. One concern here: as an end-user, does it matter to you whether you’re more valuable than users from another platform, from an advertising perspective?

Posted in: advertising, Mobile Apps, mobile web, Opera