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Are iPhone users the worst target for mobile advertising?

We hear mobile internet is growing fast. We hear iPhone users are driving this. Mobile advertising is another area where numbers for iPhone are huge, or so every one says. Hold it. Enter new studies.  Wireless week just wrote about a new study by Chitika, a US-based online advertsing firm, points to really low CTR, click through rates, for iPhone users. Overall, mobile internet users are half as likely to click on a banner ad as someone on a computer.

IPhone accounted for 66% of hte mobile internet impressions, but has the lowest CTR at 0.3%. So yes, the iPhone users surf a lot. If they are bettter targest for advertisers waits to be seen. This study was based on the US and 92 million impressions in total. I am sure there are various ways to cut this data. However, it supports the hypothesis that a blind focus on smartphones and iPhone in particular might not provide the best ROI for an advertiser.

Advertisers in most markets probably still get the best result by maximising reach to all handsets with a mix of banners and text ads using as much targeting as possible on a user level. Any service where the user has a profile of some sort offers the potential to provide gender and age which only that is a strong start for targeting. This could potentially also increase the value of the inventory at various social networks. Today they are typically not perceived as high value inventory. Strong media sites with editorial content only still seems to be what the big brand advertisers are comfortable with. Problem is the CTR expectations there are in most cases set too high.

The only advice I can give is to test, measure, test again, measure, test yet again to find your best mix as a mobile advertiser. Another thing to do is to negotiate CPO deals. If you and your adnetwork partner(s) are serious that is the way to go. Early days but I am convinced it will spill over to the mobile advertsing world as well.

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