Growth of in-app advertising both on smartphones and tablet devices helped the number of mobile ads on InMobi’s network increase 251% to over 230bn impressions during the last quarter of 2011.

Total ad impressions on the InMobi network were 235bn during the last three months of last year with the number of ad impressions generated by tablet owners increasing 771% year on year to 11.2bn.

Meanwhile, the number of ad impressions generated by smartphones grew 488% year on year to 108.9bn per quarter in Q4.

However, ad impressions generated by “advanced phones”, or feature phones, were 125.8bn, giving them a 54% share of ads impressions on the network.

The Android OS is now the most dominant operating system on the InMobi network even though Apple has four of the top five most popular individual smartphone devices on the network by ad impressions (see charts below).

Despite no individual Android device appearing in the top five list of handsets generating ad impressions, the sheer number of manufacturers producing handsets using the OS means it generates 21.2% of all ad impressions on the market.

This is compared to Apple’s 16.7% share of the market during the last quarter and the Nokia OS, which it has now dumped in favour of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, generating 18.8% of impressions.  

James Lamberti, VP global research & marketing at InMobi, said, “Mobile technologies have empowered the development of the media and advertising market and pushed consumer acceptance of media consumption through emerging channels. Advertisers are now on board with this trend and we expect to see strong innovation in this space as consumers spend more time on mobile devices and less on PCs.” 

Source: InMobi