Smaato Inc.'s Mobile Advertising Metrics report for January found that Android smartphones such as Google?s Nexus One and Motorola?s Droid are boosting mobile advertising click-through rates in a big way.

Click-through-rates for Android devices jumped from 65 compared to the average index of 100 in December 2009 to 163 in January. The higher numbers can be attributed to the branded phones from Google and Motorola, as well as ad campaigns that were interesting to the Android audience.

?The most surprising fact is that Android phones almost doubled their performance in CTR and outperformed Apple iPhones,? said Harald Neidhardt, cofounder/chief marketing officer of Smaato, Hamburg, Germany.

?Plus, Symbian handsets are still performing best among smartphones compared by CTR,? he said.

Smaato?s findings are based on 35 mobile ad networks and more than 4 billion ad requests served in the company?s network of more than 2,300 mobile publishers in January 2010.

Holiday fallout
Nokia?s Symbian handsets held the highest click-through-rate at 173. Last month it hit 161.

Apple?s iPhone and iPod touch had a combined 104, dropping slightly compared to its December total of 119.

Smaato?s metrics measure the performance of mobile ad networks globally and the fill rate is measured as the percentage of ads delivered per ad request. This varies by different factors such as country, device and content type.

The company does not publish the ad networks in the monthly metrics report, but the names are available in the dashboard of registered Smaato publishers reporting and analytics tools.

The worldwide top-performing mobile ad network in the Smaato Index had a fill rate of 89 percent in January 2010. Even though the top-performing ad network increased, the average for worldwide ad network fill rate performance declined from 35 percent to 29 percent.

December?s high fill rate demonstrates how aggressively brands were promoting products and services during the holiday season.

The average fill rate of mobile ad networks in the United States was 47 percent, down from 55 percent in December.

Smaato said it is especially important for mobile publishers and application developers to recognize the revenue potential of the American market compared to the worldwide average.

A much higher fill rate in the U.S. could mean higher revenue and a better chance to sell more mobile inventory to advertisers.

Mobile advertising for in-application and mobile Web sites have a lot of different success factors.

Mr. Neidhardt said besides targeting specific mobile Web sites or premium ad networks, marketers should also consider the advantages of targeting by device.

?Mobile advertising is growing with more campaigns and we expect better fill rates for the February metrics and beyond as January is generally a slow month in advertising spending,? Mr. Neidhardt said. ?It will be interesting to follow the spread of handset performance as well as newly published response time spreads between the mobile ad networks.?

Maximize mobile
Smaato also launched new software developer kits for the Android and iPhone on its mobile advertising platform SOMA.

The new SOMA software development kit for Android gives developers access to 35 mobile ad networks worldwide to serve and display ads within applications and mobile sites on Android handsets.

The new software development kit for the iPhone does the same, only with Apple products.

?Smaato is introducing new tools to help app developers and mobile publishers to have more access to mobile advertising revenue stream,? Mr. Neidhardt said. ?The Android SDK is a new way to easily implement mobile advertising from 35 mobile ad networks with this one single integration ? all through Smaato?s SOMA platform.

?As the Smaato Metric indicated, Android devices have a very interesting click through rate, an indicator that these smartphones can provide valuable return on investment for publishers through mobile advertising,? he said.

?Smaato?s strategy is to help publishers in maximizing their mobile monetization efforts with easy tools, SDKs and sophisticated reporting in one dashboard overview simplifying reporting needs.?