How Mobile OS Updates Affect Marketers

I’ve noticed something quite curious recently. I was running reports using our favorite mobile tracking tool and noticed there was a lot of phones being labeled as “Generic Android 4.0″

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Since we use an enterprise level device detection database I started poking around trying to figure out what caused this. Then Stephen, our lead developer, pointed out that Samsung was rolling out a major update to its phones. Click here to see article

Although our DB is advanced it is only updated every week or so as most of the data has to be hand coded by our DB provider. The data is simply coming in as Generic Android 4.0 until all the new user agent info can be mapped properly.

NOTE: This is just a theory not proven or confirmed

More importantly, one is left to wonder how this will affect your marketing campaigns. Surely if we’re having issues identifying individual phones, ad networks may be having the same problem.

Here are some thoughts:

• If you’re marketing to specific handsets you may see a drop in volume since many phones can’t be identified
• If you’re marketing to specific Android OS version you may see increase or decrease depending on Version # you’re after
• North American PSMS advertiser may see a dip in performance from their Android traffic

Anyone else seeing this?