Redwood Shores, CA January 13, 2010 – Today, Smaato Inc. published the Smaato Mobile Advertising Metrics. The Smaato Metrics unveil for the first time a Click Through Rate (CTR) Index by Handset operating system. In addition the Smaato Metrics show a comparison of Mobile Ad Network fill rates worldwide and for the USA. These metrics are based upon 3 Billion ad requests served in the Smaato Network in December 2009.

Quattro Wireless (recently acquired by Apple) and Millennial Media are the top performing mobile ad networks in the USA according to the Smaato Metrics. Both ad networks performed equally with 83% fill rates for mobile publishers in the Smaato Network.

Smaato 2009 Handset CTR (Click Through rate by Operating System)

The December performance numbers for the different Handset types show a significant spread between the operating systems in regards to the CTR. Symbian phones had the highest CTR (161) compared to the averaged Index of 100. Followed by Apple iPhone (119, with iPod Touch) the most dominant platform for mobile applications comes in second and above the Smaato Index.

Chart 1: Smaato Index – Operating System CTR (Click Through Rates) worldwide, December 2009

It is interesting to note, that Symbian phones perform two times better than featured phones on a worldwide basis and iPhone CTRs are also two times better than Android phone CTR according to the Smaato Index. Surprisingly, BlackBerry devices are producing a very low CTR in comparison; this is most likely due to the business character of the devices by RIM.

Windows Phone Handsets perform above the average indexed at 100 placing the number four smartphone handset operating system according to latest Canalys number (Q3, 2009 – see below) also in third place for in the Smaato Index.The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100.

Smartphone Operating Systems Market Share (by Canalys)

To put the Smaato Index CTR performance for operating systems in perspective, the next chart shows current market share for smartphone operating systems. Symbian remains still the dominant player worldwide for smartphone devices in the latest available figures for the third Quarter of 2009 from analyst firm Canalys.

As reported here Apple’s iPhone handsets are gaining much ground and have an impressive 17.8% market share for a line up of just a few handsets with anticipated explosive growth including a rumored debut of a Apple tablet hybrid PC that is supposed to support the iPhone apps and provide an even wider reach.

Chart 2 Smaato Index – Operating System Market Share (source: CANALYS, December 2009)

Android phones featuring Google’s operating system are expected to see the biggest growth rates in the sector in 2010 according to Forrester Research. An expected 10% market share in 2010 should be supported by newly announced Nexus One by Google and expected Android phones by manufacturers like SONY Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and HTC distributed by all the leading mobile operators worldwide.

Smaato Metrics: Fill Rate Mobile Ad Networks December 2009 (Worldwide)

Mobile publishers have several choices to monetize their mobile inventory for apps or websites. One important measurement to judge the performance of a mobile ad network is its fill rate. The fill rate (percentage of delivered ads per ad request) varies by a lot of factors: type of publisher content, country, device, demographics or anticipated CTR.

The Smaato Index unveils for the first time the performance numbers for the top 10 leading ad networks worldwide in the Smaato network.

Chart 3 Smaato Index – Fill Rate of Mobile Ad Networks (worldwide), December 2009

The top performing mobile ad network in the Smaato Index had a 77% fill rate worldwide in December 2009. The Smaato Index as the industry average for worldwide mobile ad network fillrate performance was 35% based upon 34 ad networks signed onto Smaato’s SOMA platform and ads served in more than 215 countries.

Smaato Metrics: Fill Rate Mobile Ad Networks December 2009 (USA)

The Smaato Metrics show averages fill rates of mobile ad networks in the USA for December 2009 is 55% and significantly higher than the worldwide average of 35%.

We see this better performance due to a better-developed mobile advertising market, higher budgets as well as more advanced targeting. Targeting for mobile apps or mobile websites can include location, device or a lot of other keywords or category channels.

The more publishers enrich the ad request with data or keywords about the mobile consumer in real time, the better an ad network performs in regards to fill rate and ultimately in price.

Chart 4 Smaato Index – Fill Rate of Mobile Ad Networks (USA), December 2009

Quattro Wireless (recently acquired by Apple) and Millennial Media are the top performing mobile ad networks in the USA according to the Smaato Metrics covering the month of December 2009. Publishers in the Smaato Network that used the SOMA optimization platform received an averaged fill rate of 94% in the US.

In order to optimize the mobile advertising revenue Smaato as the leading mobile ad optimizer worldwide is not only considering the fill rate, but also latency of ad request response time, anticipated fill rate, recorded average CTR of the publisher inventory as well as the recorded eCPM (average price pr thousand ads delivered) for the given ad network.

Publishers can enhance their revenue by trying to get out of the low priced “run-of-network” pricing of the ad networks by adding targeting features and enriched ad request data to allow category targeting (“travel”, “social media”) as well as audience targeting (“female”, “14-29″).

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Smaato Whitepaper: Global Choices in Mobile Advertising

Smaato released today a new white paper for mobile publishers as a backgrounder on the current mobile advertising market and choices for publishers to maximize their mobile ROI.

The white paper can be downloaded here and portraits international trends & findings for mobile ad monetization.

White Paper Preview:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

About Smaato Inc.

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators.

Smaato’s SOMA mobile advertising platform aggregates more than 34 mobile ad networks worldwide and optimizes mobile advertising revenues according to automated rules overseen by an experienced ad operations team. More than 2.000 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 215+ countries and Smaato is managing 3 billion ad requests per month.

Smaato Publishers see the performance of their Mobile Ad Networks in their account dashboards with clear names to measure the performance of the independent ad networks worldwide.

Sign up here to open your Smaato publisher account to take advantage of worldwide performance and revenue optimization for mobile advertising in your application or on mobile websites.