Push Notification Click Rates Increasing on iOS, Decreasing on Android, Study Finds

The average click rate for push notifications is 7.8 percent, according to a study from Accengage, a provider of push notification technology. This figure is the average of click rates for push notifications on iOS and Android, which the study found to be 4.9 percent and 10.7 percent respectively.

The study—which is based on more than 50 billion push notifications sent to 900 million mobile users worldwide between January and mid-June 2018—also found that, every year since 2016, iOS click rates have gone up while Android ones have gone down. More specifically, iOS click rates increased 0.4 percent as compared to 2017, while Android ones decreased 1.5 percent compared to 2017. The study notes that Android click rates remain high mainly because of their positioning: a small app icon appears on the screen of the device and sticks in the status bar until the last push notification sent by that app has been clicked.

Additionally, the study found that 43.9 percent of the iOS users of a mobile app are opted in to push notifications, compared to 91.1 percent of Android users. The study notes that on iOS users must manually opt in to push notifications while Android users are automatically opted in when they download an app (Android users can change this in their settings for push notifications).

The study also yielded results of click rates for push notifications per day and hour. It found that click rates are the highest on Tuesdays, with an average of 8.4 percent. As for the hour of the day, it found that the average is highest (11.4 percent) at 11pm.