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iOS Continues to Lead in Mobile Ad Revenue Despite Increasing Competition From Android

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Apple continued to be the leader in mobile ad revenue by a significant margin in 2014, based on the latest insights from Opera Mediaworks (via TechCrunch). According to the report, iOS captured 51.67% of ad revenue and 27.18% of traffic during the fourth quarter to close out the year as the leader in dollars earned. Meanwhile, Android trailed in second in revenue with a 41.20% share despite generating an all-time high in ad impressions and commanding 62.69% of traffic among mobile operating systems.

iOS Android Ad Revenue 2014

Android may have expanded and taken the lead in traffic, but iOS retained its solid lead for revenue generation and monetization. Apple’s tenacious grip on revenue generation is driven to a large extent by its favorable market position in western markets, such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. In these markets, rich media and video advertising are more common and the high volume of mobile application usage (vs. mobile browsing) drives a robust user acquisition market.

The mobile advertising market, much like the overall smartphone industry, is largely a two-horse race between iOS and Android. BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows each accounted for around 1% or less in traffic and revenue during the fourth quarter, while all other smaller mobile platforms grouped together held a 5.55% share of traffic and 5.89% share of revenue. Social networking, games, and music, video and media lead the way in traffic volume and revenue generation.

Tags: Android, iOS

Top Rated Comments

Pakaku Avatar
149 months ago
Using iOS 6 and 7. I WILL NEVER put the trash that iOS 8 is on any of my devices.

Someone didn't read the article.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Watabou Avatar
149 months ago
Oh my god! Windows OS at 0.19%!!!!!!!!! Hahahahaha! They seriously need to stop. Just stop. That's basically 2/1000th of the market. Ouch. And that appears to account for their line of Surface tablets.

Just goes to show how RIGHT this guy was: http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/07/windows-phone-beat-iphon/#. Amazing prediction. Unbelievable.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
149 months ago
People should have a look at the original report (http://operamediaworks.com/insights/sma_Q4_2014.html) there are many more interesting graphs.

During 2014 Android grow, and iOS dropped, in terms of both impressions and revenue as a percentage.
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The US is still the number one in terms of impression, but in 2014 they dropped below 50%, the growth region is APAC (China, India etc)
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We need to remember that all of these number are percentages, not absolutes. I would expect absolute impress and revenue to have increased in almost all region for all OSs.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
149 months ago
The iPad numbers compared to the Android tablet numbers are very interesting.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kdarling Avatar
149 months ago
Ads seen while viewing media cost more

Reading the report...

The upshot is that Android users do more social apps, whereas iOS users do more media viewing/listening.

And the media category costs more for an ad, which is what this is about.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheAppleFairy Avatar
149 months ago
Using iOS 6 and 7. I WILL NEVER put the trash that iOS 8 is on any of my devices.

Good for you.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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