A new report from mobile adver­tis­ing tech com­pa­ny Velti reveals that Android’s mobile ad share has dropped again this year, falling from 41 per cent in May 2012 to 36 per cent in May 2013.

The “state of mobile adver­tis­ing” report reveals that, over the same peri­od, mobile ad share leap-frogged for iPhone and iPad – up from 20.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent and from 13.4 per cent to 17.1 per cent respec­tive­ly. Apple launched its new iPhone 5 to a blaze of pub­lic­i­ty dur­ing this peri­od, and it alone account­ed for 7.9 per cent of all the ads shown on Apple mobile devices. By con­trast, the Galaxy SIII from Sam­sung, which sold over 30 mil­lion units in the first five months after its launch in May 2012, only mus­tered 2.3 per cent of total impressions.

A real mobile adver­tis­ing trend?

Any­one hold­ing media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies will be curi­ous about what this trend real­ly rep­re­sents.  The year-on-year fig­ures sup­plied by Velti, it claims, “pro­vide a high­ly accu­rate pic­ture of the mar­ket”, reveal­ing key insights into how dif­fer­ent mobile devices are being used by con­sumers. Giv­en that the data was col­lect­ed from a sam­ple size of gar­gan­tu­an pro­por­tions (net­work giants sup­ply hun­dreds to hun­dreds of thou­sands of apps on lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of mobile gad­gets), that’s a sound point. It’s pos­si­ble to infer pret­ty accu­rate­ly which plat­forms are being used by which peo­ple from data of this magnitude.

And what emerges from the fig­ures is the ongo­ing (and widen­ing) diver­gence between Android and iPhone: con­sumers seem to be using their iOS and Android devices dif­fer­ent­ly, at least in the US. Velti’s data, how­ev­er, is def­i­nite­ly skewed toward usage in North Amer­i­ca and West­ern Europe – a dif­fer­ent pic­ture may well have emerged if Asian and Indi­an mobile users had been included.

Is the adver­tis­ing crown slip­ping from games?

Anoth­er note­wor­thy trend that appears to be devel­op­ing also has impli­ca­tions for mobile adver­tis­ing cam­paigns: games remain enor­mous­ly impor­tant in the app mar­ket­place but the times may be a‑changin’, to mis­quote Bob Dylan.  Games account for half the apps on a plat­form and half the down­loads but, accord­ing to Velti, between May’12 and May’13, game impres­sions fell by 15 per cent, while books and enter­tain­ment apps each leapt by 7 per cent.