U.S. Symbian users 2.7 times more likely to click mobile ads than iPhone users

By on May 17, 2010 at 3:53 PM
mobile May 17, 2010

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According to mobile ad firm Smaato, U.S.-based Symbian users are 2.7 times more likely to click on a mobile ad than their iPhone OS using countrymen. The findings, based on 6 billion ads served up by 40 ad companies in the month of April, are quite puzzling when considering the infinitesimally small share of the U.S. smartphone market Symbian currently occupies. But GigaOm’s Kevin Tofel has what sounds like a very reasonable explanation for the stats: “Symbian is a more mature operating system in terms of age, and both advertisers and developers have used that time to optimize mobile advertising on the platform. Apple’s iPhone OS is a relative youngster compared to Symbian, having only initially launched on a product in June of 2007.” Kind of makes one wonder why the FTC is making such a stink over Google’s attempt at acquiring AdMob and the launch of Apple’s iAd. Moving on… Anyone else think it’s pretty incredible that feature phone users click on more ads than Android, BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Phone users?

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26 Comments

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  • http://mikenayyar kyberneticka

    Also, how much can you account for accidental selection/touches of ads, accidental clickthrough, not knowing if something is an ad or part of the application/site you’re looking at?

    • http://www.maemo-freak.com christexaport

      no more than you can for any other OS, unless you assume users of one group are less intelligent than those of another. I am of that assumption, but doubt any theory like you suppose would hold any water in any test.

  • T

    Clearly, not intelligent enough to recognize ads and avoid them.

  • StevenGlansburg

    So symbian users either like to waste time clicking diet pill ads or have clumsy fingers…either way mobile ads are a waste and just take up room on the already limited screen realestate.

    • m10

      It’s not the clumsy fingers, rather the shitty touchscreens Nokia keeps putting out. You never know where you are going to click.

  • Roman

    Wait until iAds comes out, they’ll be clicking like crazy with that great technology…

  • yup

    instead of trying to make iphones sound good with the title, why not say blackberry users less likely to click mobile ads

    • SteveBerman

      Blackberry users only use their phone for business right? So why would they be around ads? STFU clown.

    • joe

      so funny. I guess the author of the post is an iphone user. Alt title: chart shows gullibility by phone purchase.

      @steve berman – you’re not doing much to help your fan boy cause.

  • none

    Shenanigans

  • Dara

    One thing that I’ve noticed is that targetted Symbian ads are often for apps and games. If it’s set up right, the ad just links to the installer file.

    I know that I signed up for Gizmo5 voip because of an ad pitching 2c/minute calls to Europe and NA.

    I noticed that Nokia and Opera are both advertising through Smaato. I’d certainly click on a Nokia ad for a new app or service, so maybe this number is a product of trusted advertisers pitching free products for marketshare rather than trying to sell magic beans.

  • Tim

    How do you see ads on a dumbphone? The only thing I can think of is opera mini…

    • Mack Simmons

      Dude, Symbian was the first OS to offer full multitasking. It is the single-biggest smartphone OS around the world. Symbian isn’t synonymous with dumbphones. Troll.

      • Norm

        Dude he is talking about the last line regarding feature phones, he was not calling your symbian dumb.
        Go after some of the real trolls, like Glansburg

  • http://www.twitter.com/tonyyeung Tony

    Nobody wants to click on any links on a blackberry cause the browser is slow as hell

    • none

      *cough* opera mini

  • Mike

    This is because Nokia is marketing like crazy in ads, and also many of the symbian apps have ads built into them, in order to make them free available to the mass… funny thing is that when IAd comes out people will say this in an ingeneous idea, when sadly it has been out for a while… I am not saying i am for these ads because they take up realestate..but for business owners it can be a good marketing tool… so please don’t talk out of your a hole…lol :)

  • gamerx97

    maybe it’s because you would have to be a click-happy fool to buy a phone with that OS

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Gamerx97

    @Tony,

    How sadly true

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • MarkyMark

    As a happy Nokia E71 user, I’d say that yeah its probably more due to accidental clicks on the clunky interface.

    If you haven’t installed the latest Opera Mobile for Symbian, GO DO IT NOW!! Its a revelation in small-screen browsing.

    Sent from my iPad :)

  • bonesb

    With just about every f-ing iPhone app going waaaaay overboard with ads, I can see this – games, news, productivity apps – every tap gets you an ad, and every once in a while that ad feed crashes the app. Gawd, where can I get the apps without the ads!

  • Eric

    @Bonesb

    You buy them dummy.

  • user

    so essentially they’re saying symbian users are 2.7x more stupid…

  • roebling

    Whoa, nellie. When something doesn’t look right there’s a reason. Usually, the reason is: Something’s not right! 1) The ad firm is promoting Symbian, probably for money, maybe for love or self-preservation, but my bet on money on money. 2) An error in the methodology seems to excuse the ad firm. Like the global-warming proofers, this ad firm has discovered an exploit that they’re milking for as much and as long as possible. Likely culprits are: the Symbian browsers are prefetching links, an old but reliable way of seeming to speed up surfing. Or, the Symbian browsers are accessing the ‘net through a portal that prefetches web pages to speed up the browsing experience, and, like Opera or Netzero, that portal processes and compresses the fetched info to reduce the data broadcast.
    I’ve had two real Nokia smartphones and they were great in their day but, like Google’s Nexus One, they weren’t subsidized and sold by carriers so 99% of cell-phone users never even knew they existed, let alone bought one. The widely distributed Nokia ‘smartphones’ aren’t as smart as an abacus and no one’s clicking anything more sophisticated than SMS on them.

  • http://www.maemo-freak.com christexaport

    Anyone every think that maybe most of the ads are FLASH on the web, and either don’t show or are static and unappealing on other mobiles? Since ALL Symbian devices feature Flash enabled browsers, they have access to more ads in the first place, whereas others never even see the ads.

    Also, Michael Bettiol, SHAME ON YOU! You trolled the comment community with that lame “featurephone” comment, as if any featurephone OSes were mentioned anywhere in the report. You, of all people, know full well that Symbian is the ORIGINAL smartphone OS, and powers smartphones with more features than any other smartphone OS on the planet.

    Now go to the corner, think about what you did, and don’t you EVER, and I mean NEVER, do that silly stuntman stuff again. Colt Seavers you ain’t.

  • JeepersCreepers

    Maybe they are looking for ads where to buy an Android device???

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