Forbes’ Rob Hof shared some results that we’ve seen consistently among some of the advertisers running mobile ads on Facebook so far, namely that ad performance on Android devices is much better than on iPhone devices.  Partnering with their social ads agency, TargetedSocial, Optimal delivered great results for Unilever on several mobile ad campaigns and in the process found quite divergent results for iPhone versus Android in the US. Every other advertiser we worked with saw results consistent with what was quoted in the Forbes article, namely that clickthrough rates on Android were better as were conversion rates from clicks to fans.

Note that we also more often saw additional actions on Android that we did not see on iPhone, like profile photo views, post likes and comments, for example. We believe that some of this will change with the announced intention by Apple and Facebook to integrate far more deeply but this data shows the need for it. iPhone users are more affluent (and of course, hence more likely to dig lacrosse) than the average Android user, and here are a few tidbits about brands and things that iPhone users have a greater affinity for (full details are available, see below):

iPhone users are slightly more female, but otherwise these groups overall are very similar in age/gender.

At Optimal, we have extensively profiled the attitudinal and location differences between Android and iPhone users in the United States. Contact us if you would like to see our full report: Android vs. iPhone Users (US) – June 2012.