Jumptap Predicts Promising Future for Tablets

Targeted mobile advertising specialist Jumptap made public its MobileSTAT Report for August yesterday, which looked at Jumptap network data and reveals some interesting tidbits, such as the fact that Maine was the number one state for tablet usage during the month.

Wyoming, Hawaii, North Dakota, Arkansas, Connecticut, Virginia, New Hampshire, Minnesota and New Jersey rounded out the top ten states in August that had the highest tablet traffic relative to overall mobile traffic.

The spike in tablet prevalence in the country's most northeastern state was "clearly driven by affluent vacationers," but really it speaks to larger trends in the mobile device market. Analysis firm Gartner estimates that tablet sales will reach 326.3 million units (almost the entire population of the United States) by the year 2015. Though previously considered more of a niche or novelty product, tablets could see a big upswing with many models getting lower pricepoints, like the less-than-$200 Amazon Fire.

Jumptap says that, based on the usage patterns it has seen, "the Gartner number may prove to be low."

According to the MobileSTAT Report, 56 percent of tablet traffic on the Jumptap network was actually produced outside of the U.S., whereas only 28 percent of overall mobile traffic on the network is not from the United States. This figure signals "deeper tablet penetration overseas."

A total of 91 percent of tablet traffic around the world was via Wi-Fi, which isn't a "truly mobile" method of accessing the Internet.

As for tablet operating systems, 75 percent of the traffic was from iOS. Android followed with 20 percent and WebOS clocked in at 4 percent.

The study didn't just focus on tablet use, however; it also compared network click-through rates (CTRs), App vs. Mobile Web market share, mobile marketing and demographic trends and the top mobile advertising verticals.

When it comes to smartphone statistics, the MobileSTAT Report shows that Android, iOS and Blackberry platforms (continue to) dominate the top three spots and own over 90 percent of the market share, with Android being the clear leader by hosting 47 percent of the network.

Still, iOS by Apple provides "the best direct response advertising performance" with an impressive CTR of 0.71 percent. The demographic groups who exhibited the highest mobile CTRs were users between the ages of 45 and 74, users with incomes of over $50,000 and male users. According to the Report, "a clear new challenge for advertisers is getting beyond CTR to connect with younger, less-affluent audiences whose presence on the Jumptap network is large, but whose propensity to click on ads is low."

As far as mobile verticals go, retail, automotive and entertainment were the largest in spending during August, while telecom, entertainment and insurance had the best CTRs.

Jumptap's MobileSTAT gives the industry a monthly look into targeting and audience trends in the mobile market buy using the company's unique, data-driven approach to mobile advertising. The results come from large quantities of network data that are run through a proprietary algorithm to analyze and normalize it.