iPhone owners rank last for mobile ad click throughs

by Darren Davidson, Brand Republic 14-Sep-09, 11:00

LONDON - Apple iPhone owners have the lowest mobile advertising click-through rate out of the five major smartphones, according to a new study.

The iPhone ranked behind Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows CE, Palm OS, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry, with a lowly 0.30%.

The study was carried out by Chitika, a Massachusetts-based online advertising network, using a sample of 92m page impressions on mobile versus non-mobile internet usage.

The research found that mobile users are approximately half as likely to click on an ad as non-mobile users.

Of the 92m impressions cited in the study, about 1.3m (1.5%) came from mobile browsing.

While non-mobile held steady with a 0.83% click-through rate, mobile as a whole pulled 0.48% -- just over half of the average. iPhone accounted for the bulk of mobile hits at 66%.

The group with the highest click-through rate came from 'other', which comprised BlackBerry users and a small handful of other phone operating systems including Symbian, Nokia, and HTC

However, Chitika cautioned that its study compared the same ads on different media, instead of comparing standard online advertising with mobile-oriented ads, suggesting that ads tailored for mobile phones would produce a higher click-through rate.