After passing Apple’s iOS in number of mobile ad impressions last year, Google’s Android is now the leading platform for mobile ad revenues as well, although just by a narrow margin,
according to the new State of Mobile Advertising report from Opera Mediaworks. (It should be noted the report is based solely on data from the company’s own mobile ad business.) Meanwhile, iOS
still captures a disproportionate share of ad dollars relative to its volume of ad impressions.
In the first quarter of 2015, Android accounted for 45.8% of total revenues for mobile ads
delivered by Opera Mediaworks, compared to 45.4% for iOS. In terms of volume, Android accounted for 65.2% of all impressions, versus just 22.3% for iOS -- so Apple’s ad business is clearly still
far more lucrative.
Much further down the totem pole, Symbian accounted for 4% of mobile ad impressions and 1.3% of revenue, while BlackBerry accounted for 1.9% of impressions and 2% of
revenue. Last and definitely least, Windows Phone had 0.2% of traffic and just under 0.1% of revenue.
In terms of specific formats, iOS still has a big lead in mobile video, accounting for 56.6%
of total mobile video ad impressions and 62.7% of revenue, compared to Android’s shares of 42.8% for impressions and 36.2% for revenue. Furthermore iOS also enjoyed an advantage in video ad
completion rates, with 87.2% completion versus 76.7% for Android.
Overall, mobile video has jumped from 2.5% of all impressions in the first quarter of 2014 to 12.8% of impressions currently,
while its share of revenues delivered to publishers has soared from 12% to 50% over the same period.
Turning to devices, iPads are the most valuable ad real estate in terms of monetization per
impression, according to Opera Mediaworks, which calculates that the device’s ratio of share of revenue to share of impressions served is more than double that of iPhones, triple Android
tablets, and around seven times that for Android phones.