Facebook ad profit a staggering 1,790% more on iPhone than Android
Nov. 12 - 13, 2013 — A study of more than 200 billion ads on Facebook says that mobile ads on iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return on investment than ads on Android. Even worse, advertising on Android actually costs more than it returns.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already reported that mobile contributed 41% of its ad business in July 2013, making its mobile-ad revenue acceleration central to whether its shift in user behavior could be monetized. The reported iPhone/Android return gap adds a device-level constraint: mobile reach alone does not translate into equally valuable ad inventory.
The study's broad pickup across advertising, Apple-focused and business outlets underscores why the finding matters to buyers: platform mix can determine whether Facebook mobile campaigns produce a return at all.
First-order effects
- Advertisers evaluating Facebook mobile campaigns have a strong incentive to prioritize iPhone impressions, where the study reports far higher returns, and to reduce or renegotiate Android spend that costs more than it yields.
- Facebook’s Android inventory faces immediate pressure to demonstrate better performance or lower its effective price, while iPhone inventory gains leverage with performance-oriented buyers.
Second-order effects
- Campaign reporting and media-buying decisions become more device-specific, shifting budget allocation from aggregate “mobile” buys toward separate iPhone and Android performance targets.
- Android publishers and ad platforms must compete harder for demand where buyers treat device type as a proxy for conversion value, rather than relying on Android’s audience scale alone.
Third-order effects
- If the gap persists, mobile advertising develops a two-tier market in which revenue per active device—not raw mobile audience—sets the economic value of a platform’s ad inventory.
- The broader shift is toward performance-priced mobile advertising, with platforms rewarded for proving commercial intent and conversion quality at the device level.
The trend: Mobile ad monetization is moving from audience-scale metrics toward device-level measures of commercial intent and revenue per active device.