More money made from mobile ads on Android than on iOS for the first time ever

One of the primary ways that app developers make money from their apps is from mobile advertising. This is especially true of apps which are free to download and don’t contain any in-app purchases. For a long time it has been conventional wisdom that app developers make more money on iOS than on Android. However things started to change about a year ago.

At the beginning of 2014, we witnessed a big change for mobile advertising: Android overtook iOS as the top platform for traffic. In the world of mobile advertising, “traffic” means the number of mobile ad impressions served.  Now a year on and Android dominates the market. Over 65 percent of all mobile ad impressions go to Android devices, which is a huge growth from the 42.8 percent of Q1 2014. In comparison iOS devices get around 22 percent of the ads, of which 17 percent going to iPhones and the rest going to iPads and iPods (i.e. models in the iPod Touch range).

However, although Android was getting more ads, the amount of money made by developers was still higher on iOS. App developers get money in several different ways depending on the mobile advertising platform and the types of ads displayed by the app. Primarily the developers make money when a user taps on an advert, or alternatively there are some schemes where the developers gets money per 1000 ads shown.

Until now the combination of the number of taps and the price paid by advertisers for their adverts to be displayed meant that iOS generated more income for developers. But that has changed. For the first time ever, Android is leading revenue generation, albeit by a hair’s breadth.

According to Opera Mediaworks, the advertising arm of the web browser maker, 45.77 percent of mobile advertising revenue comes from Android, while 45.44 percent comes from iOS. It has derived these numbers from its own mobile advertising platform, however it more than likely reflects the overall trend in mobile advertising across all the platforms.

Are you an app developer with apps on both iOS and Android? See any changes in Android income recently?