Symbian lead Smaato's index of mobile advertising platforms
Backing up its long-held view that Symbian is a click-through rate (CTR) powerhouse, the latest statistics from mobile advertising firm Smaato suggests the OS remains at the top of the pile of ad hitters.
Such is its success, in fact, that Smaato has gone as far as to proclaim that "there's more to mobile advertising than the iPhone".
Smaato states the number of Nokia handsets globally naturally gives Symbian a boost, but its worldwide click-through rate of 157 in April is more than double that of iPhone (including iPod touch).
Super SymbianSmaato's metrics are based upon 40 mobile ad networks and over 6 billion ad requests served in its network of more than 4,000 registered mobile publishers in April, with the rate normalised at 100 as a datum.
Smaato's data suggests that it's feature phones what it defines as non-smartphone handsets and not iPhone that represents the biggest rival to Symbian's worldwide CTR dominance, up 9 from March to a CTR of 134 in April.
There are key differences between the US and Europe, however, with Symbian falling into third place across European territories (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain) behind Windows Phone on 126 and iPhone on 122.
Conversely, Symbian handsets are the prevailing force in the States, with its CTR of 339, 2.7 times higher than that of its nearest challenger iPhone on 125.
"This data helps to show that even in its home markets, the iPhone... is not the top performing OS in terms of CTR which could well be one of the reasons Apple is looking to try to re-invent mobile advertising to engage its users," Smaato says in its analysis.
Global view
On a worldwide basis, fill rates of the top 10 global advertising networks dipped from 28 percent in March to 26 percent in April.
The US, however, bucked this trend, with the average fill rate rising by 5 percent to 46 percent almost double the worldwide average.
Europe reflects the overall worldwide decline, with a fill rate of 25 percent.
[source: Smaato]