The September mobile ad report from Velti is dominated by the launch of the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. For one thing, after two months where Android seemed to be gaining on iOS in mobile ad impressions, iOS saw a 5 percent increase.
Actually, the iPhone 5 also played a big role in Velti's last report -- even though the device wasn't available yet, the company was making predictions based on previous Apple launches. And indeed, the company says iOS saw a similar increase after the launch of the iPhone 4S. Apple's mobile operating system now claims 72 percent of total impressions, while Android has 38 percent.
Of all the ad impressions from the iPhone 5, 43 percent came from the United States, 14 percent came from Japan, and 8 percent came from the United Kingdom. As for what people were doing with their brand-new iPhones, Velti says 27 percent of usage in the first weekend came from social networking apps, and 22 percent came from games. Photo apps, meanwhile, declined to a low of 8 percent. One explanation: The improved camera functionality and panorama feature, which the report says "could be holding users off from using third party apps to enhance photos."
The report also says that iOS 6 saw rapid gains, with 40 percent of users upgrading in the first week. Virtually all of those upgrades came from users with iOS 5, while there's still a small group (11 percent) of iPhone owners who are holding out and sticking with iOS 4. (A recent report from Chartboost suggests that after the early growth, iOS 6 adoption may have plateaued.)
In addition to reporting on the new device and operating system, Velti also says that eCPMS (the price paid by advertisers per thousand impressions) rose 15 percent overall.
The report is based on data from Velti's Mobclix ad exchange, which serves ads to more than 33,500 apps. To draw the above conclusions about app usage Velti combined the usual ad impression data with third-party research.
This story originally appeared in TechCrunch.
