Android tablets, iPads still see wide gap in mobile web use

If you thought the numbers showing Android tablet use pulling even with iPad in the U.S. from the Online Publishers Association that made the rounds earlier this week sounded a bit surprising, you’re not alone. The folks at Chitika Insights delved into their own mobile ad network for web usage data of iPads and Android tablets in the U.S. and found results that painted a different picture than the roughly 50/50 ownership market share does. The report will be published Thursday, but we got an early peek.

The OPA found in its report that in the U.S. iPad ownership had reached 52 percent market share, and various tablets running Android software had reached 51 percent. The numbers imply overlap in ownership since they don’t add up to 100 percent. But beyond merely owning one, which devices are the owners engaged with the most?

What Chitika found was that iPad users generate almost nine times more web traffic than Android tablet users. This is not a totally new insight — it’s been reported previously that iPad users interact with their mobile web browsers much more often than their Android tablet-owning counterparts — but Chitika checked very recent data, “hundreds of millions of impressions” between June 4 and June 10 on its mobile ad network, and found a still-wide gap between how iPads are used versus its competition.

Using a tablet’s browser isn’t the only way to evaluate whether said device is being used. It doesn’t, for example, account very well for devices like the Kindle Fire or the Nook, which are primarily e-readers. But it is one way. And for folks in the ad business, that does matter, as they try to figure out how to reach users on mobile devices.

According to Chitika: “This asymmetric Web traffic means that tablet ad optimization for the iPad should provide the greatest benefit, and take a priority over Android tablets.”

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