Men are reportedly more likely than women to click on smartphone display adverts and also purchase the products they advertise.

Insights garnered from over four billion ad impressions during Q1 2014 has confirmed certain perceptions of men and their online shopping habits, highlighting their inclination to act upon messages delivered by mobile advertisements.

It is thought that men are representing the driving force behind clicks and conversions via smartphone, although women are not far from catching up.

The gender war

The research arrives courtesy of email ad exchange LiveIntent, which looked to its latest batch of campaign data for emerging trends in mobile marketing.

Figures from the study show that 31% of all ad clicks made by men are carried out on a smartphone, compared to 28% by women. The same applied to conversions on phones, as men outscored women with a proportion of 25% compared to 20%.   

LiveIntent did however reveal that women have a higher preference for browsing via tablet than men, and, according to the company, this device is generating a larger percentage of conversions compared to impressions than any other technology.

Thus, the fact that 18% of all conversions made by women are via tablet, compared to 13% achieved by men, could become more important as adoption for the device continues to gather pace.

Email proving popular

The study also cites email as a highly effective way of driving ad engagement, due to the large amount of time mobile users spend accessing their inboxes.  

Open rates for emails accessed via smartphones and tablets are expected to pass 50% by 2015 thanks to 23% of every mobile internet hour being spent in the application.

Separate data from IDC suggests 78% of mobile device owners use email, more than the percentage using Facebook (70%) and even web browsing in general (73%).