Opera users click on the most ads, followed by Safari Mobile, Internet Explorer, and Android

Which browser brings in the most ad clicks, disregarding its market share? If you guessed Internet Explorer, as it doesn’t have a decent ad blocker and users of the browser often don’t install add-ons or extensions, you’d be wrong. It’s actually Opera, followed by Apple’s Safari Mobile, and only then IE.

The latest data comes from Chitika Insights, which says it sampled “hundreds of millions of US & Canadian online ad impressions” to come up with the above chart. It’s actually part of a larger infographic that talks about which browser’s users are the most verbose (apparently Safari’s) and that the world’s most popular browser is still Internet Explorer (duh).

The advertising perspective is fascinating, however, since it meshes both desktop and mobile browsers. As Chitika notes, while Opera takes first place here, it still made up an average of less than 1 percent “of all Web browsing this past year” and while I’ve seen higher percentages in other reports, it’s never above 2 percent. As such, if you have to skip out on a browser when you’re developing your Web site, Opera is still your most likely candidate.

This brings us to Safari Mobile, which, as we’ve discussed before is the most popular mobile browser: almost every mobile market share study shows the iOS browser is used significantly more than the Android browser (see Net Applications for an example). Of course when it comes to mobile browsers, Android’s stock browser is next in line.

If your site doesn’t support iOS and Android users in today’s day and age, it really should. So why are mobile users tapping on ads so much? Well, ad blockers aren’t as popular on mobile, but the bigger reason is likely due to the size of touch screens. It’s simply much easier to accidentally tap on an ad on a smartphone than it is on a PC. Alternatively, if a popular site has a very good mobile site, iOS and Android users might simply be more inclined to give back by checking out a few banners meant just for them.

See also – Adblock Plus for Chrome now unblocks certain ads by default; Here’s how to block them again and Apple iOS users more likely to install third-party browsers than Android users

Image credit: asabird