Kindle Fire Heats Up

Network traffic to Amazon’s Kindle Fire Tablet rose by 270 per cent in the last week of November, according to the latest MobileSTAT report from mobile advertising firm, Jumptap.

Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, was the US city that warmed to the Kindle Fire the most, with an estimated one in every 124 residents using the device, and 20 per cent of traffic to the device coming from within one mile of Amazon HQ. Other cities with the highest penetration of Kindle Fires included San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta and Phoenix.

“The quick adoption of the Kindle Fire speaks to consumer desire for mobile content consumption at lower price points,” says Jumptap CMO, Paran Johar. “In 2012, tablets will lengthen the shadow they have begun to cast over the PC/laptop, as they already perform many of the same tasks; and consumers won’t want to purchase both. Based on the success of the Fire, other players will want to enter the tablet space at lower price points.”

The report also shows that traffic to the Angry Birds mobile game spiked at midnight on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in areas within a kilometre of a Wal-Mart store, which JumpTap speculates is down to people playing the game while waiting in line to pay for their purchases on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Android’s market share jumped to 52.7 per cent, up from 44.7 per cent in September. Google recently announced that it is activating 700,000 Android devices per day, which compares to an estimated 189,000 daily iPhone activations. 

The report also offers insights into the use of targeting, network clickthrough rates (CTR), and the top mobile advertising verticals. Approximately 80 per cent of ad campaigns on the Jumptap network use at least one targeting method, of which ‘location’ continues to be the most popular. JumpTap believes that 2012 will bring an increase not only in targeted campaigns, but also in the number of targeting methods used, as advertisers take advantage of new third party data providers.

Evening and late-night hours continued to be the times of highest CTR, giving some small piece of mind to employers. Retailers also benefit, as most mobile shopping occurs as home. And as advertisers geared up for holiday blockbusters and a busy shopping season, Entertainment and Retail ranked as the top two verticals in both ad spend and CTR. 

JumpTap’s MobileSTAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) report offers a monthly view of the top targeting and audience trends in mobile advertising, based on activity in Jumptap’s network, which reaches 95m mobile users in the US, and 142m million worldwide. You can download a full copy of the report here.