Yes, smartphone apps are still in vogue, and most mobile app stores continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Yet consumers spend more time engaging with the mobile Web on their smartphones than through ad-supported apps, mobile advertising startup Jumptap says in its STAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) report. The company claims more than 58 percent of mobile internet users in the U.S. are getting content through their browser(s), compared to 42 percent via mobile apps.
An explanation for the discrepancy was not given, but I suspect this has something to do with there simply existing more websites than there are apps, and that jumping from one app to the next to consume content isn’t as good a user experience as simply opening a new page or tab within your mobile browser of choice.
Additionally, a lot of major Internet services (Gmail, Bing, Google search etc.) tend to function as good or even better through the mobile browser than via native apps.
To put together the report, freshly funded Jumptap analyzed 10 billion ad requests on its mobile advertising network, made by 83 million unique users. The company not only looked at content consumption from mobile handsets, but also at how well users respond to mobile advertising, finding that ad engagement trends upwards with age and income.
The company claims consumers aged 40 and over were almost five times more likely to engage with an ad when compared to younger mobile consumers. Similarly, users with annual income above $50K were found twice as likely to engage with ads as those earning less.
As for the favored mobile platform, the report found that Android drives the largest share of ad requests on the Jumptap network (39.1 percent), with iOS and RIM not far behind with 29.8 percent and 24.8 percent, respectively.
However, Apple’s iOS maintains the lead for user engagement for mobile ads.