• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 11, 2013

More evidence tablets sales surged over the holidays comes from Millennial Media, which saw tablet impressions on its ad network grow 12% a day on average from Dec. 23 to Dec. 27. That was far higher than the rate for smartphones, where impressions increased only 2% over the same period, reflecting the larger installed base of smartphones compared to tablets.

Impressions on Android tablets in particular shot up, increasing 18% on average around Christmas, with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Kindle, Fire and Google Nexus 7 all doubling their impressions over the 5-day period analyzed.

Even with the addition of the iPad Mini, iOS tablet impressions grew only 7%. Millennial attributed Android’s faster growth to the greater availability and diversity of Android tablets this year. The rise in iPad impressions during Christmas 2012, however, was still up from a year ago.