AdMonitor, a Google Maps mashup from mobile ad serving company AdMob, provides real time data on who is viewing mobile ads worldwide, including the network they are on and the phone they are using.
San Mateo based AdMob has seemingly slipped under the radar in terms of attention whilst competitors have been acquired; Third Screen Media was acquired bought by AOL and Screentonic was acquired by Microsoft. And yet this is a company with some great stats and backing. AdMob is now serving 1 billion mobile ads a month and has amongst its investors Sequoia and Accel Partners. Director Maynard Web was COO for eBay between 2002 and 2006 and staff include Tony Nethercutt, the former VP of Sales for YouTube and Kevin Scott, a former senior engineering manager for Google.
The AdMonitor mashup provides an accessible way of seeing just how many ads AdMob is serving. Notably, Nokia would still appear to remain the world most popular provider of mobile phones.
AdMob clients include ESPN and CBS.
It’s under the radar because it’s worthless. The number of ad viewers is minimal.
Who would want real-time data of this? Give me a daily summary.
No one will sit there and watch the map move.
This is very cool technology–for a local advertiser it would be great to see where (on a map of a city) the ads are being shown (at the city level) rather than at the world or even the country level.
useless junk!
AdMob’s network IS worthless, we’ve tried many different verticals and have minimal conversions over a few months. I would imagine a lot of it would be automated clicking because a lot of the publisher site’s are very shady.
Hi Duncan,
Take a look at this link. It is related with your post. The best ways to present data:
http://www.smas...ern-approaches/
Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
From AdMob’s website: Maynard Webb, Investor and former COO, eBay Inc. Omar was in grad school then…
It seems like a great tool for the smaller advertise who wants to pinpoint where their ads are being shown and to whom. On a larger scale it seems like a “neat” tool that provides needless information.
V
Great to see TechCrunch taking more of an interest in mobile with an increasing number of posts as of late!
Just wanted to chime in here with a slight correction. I was in fact not the COO of eBay. That distinction belongs to one of our board members: Maynard Webb. During early 2006 I was in fact COO of a 2 bedroom apartment in Philly (my wife was CEO).
On the AdMonitor piece, I just wanted to emphasize that we put this up as an interesting way to visualize the over 40M impressions we serve each day across our network. It’s not really intended to be a reporting tool or anything of the sort; rather an attempt to expose just a bit of the massive activity that is occurring on the mobile web. Many people discount mobile browsing as something that has a long way to go before we see big numbers. This is our small attempt at exposing some of the activity that is actually out there.
Great job, Duncan! Another stellar post. How much time did you spend on the AdMob site before posting to Techcrunch? Journalism at its finest.
visualizations are cool
it’s one thing to see in the ad-targeting console the geographic options available, but this mashup makes it easy for me to show folks at a glance why go with admob when we’re running mobile campaigns for our global service
but this visualization is just fun, really. nothing to do with effectiveness.
tried google and the startup also-rans. sticking with admob, thanks.
Omar
my mistake, the Directors part has no bio for yourself (its higher up the page) and Webb’s directly below below your name, so I misread it, post corrected.
TechDumpster (comment 1), how exactly is 1 billion ads a month or up to 1500 a second minimal, and on what planet? From what I understand (at least what their PR rep tells me) AdMob may well be the biggest dedicated mobile advertising provider out there.
@Duncan,
Feedback: Biggest dedicated mobile ad provider? That’s what their PR is suppose to say, otherwise they will end up looking for a job with the biggest mobile ad provider:-)
Duncan – they might be the biggest (i have no idea) but the idea of a real-time map of who is viewing an ad is a waste of technology. No one should be sitting there watching this. Give me an orderly view – the map is fine – click a country and see everything for the past 30 days, fine.
Another P.O.S.
I’m a mid size publisher with AdMob. Bottom line is this. They are the real deal and all their numbers are actually as they claim. No BS. The Pay on time unlike other networks that owe me money (this is huge ok?). They respond quickly to inquires and customer support issues (within first 2 hrs of a question). They have like no downtime at all. They have been improving their click throughs steadily and getting rid of all kinds of fraud activity. I know cuz I helped them get rid of some shady sites. Their site is constantly improving. The visualizer is a nice tool for them to show whats going on in the network. They have tons of boring stas I look at all day long and this at least is cool to look at. If you have a mobile site you gotta try them out and see for yourself. If you dont then you should learn how to develop a mobile site cuz they are making money. Thats the bottomline.
Admob…instead of doing another google map please fix your stupid ad tool. Your technology sucks and as of today we have seen no results. The “technology” you own is a joke. Maybe that is why no one wants to acquire you (a little too late already).
These guys are by far the most legit company in the business. The counter thing they have is important to show real data since other startups are trying to mimic them unsuccessfully as evidenced in the story below.
http://ventureb...out-of-control/
@#18
The most legit? Really?
I think they are disparately positioning the company for sell! This company has no unique IP.
I run a very large mobile website, and have been using AdMob for months. Let me tell you that from a technical and product standpoint, these guys know what they are doing. They have by far the fastest ad response (which is really important as mobile users are already bogged down by slow data connections, thanks to carriers) and they have stellar customer support. I have immediate access to product managers and support people who take feedback and improve the service.
I agree that a better tool would be more useful, but this is cool. I wouldn’t bet against them. I have used mobile ad networks from a number of other providers (yes, including Google) and it would not suprise me if AdMob gave them a run for their money. Hopefully they can keep up the good work. I don’t think they are desperate to sell – perhaps they will let me invest some day alongside Sequioa, one of the investors in Google and Yahoo!
“how exactly is 1 billion ads a month or up to 1500 a second minimal, and on what planet?”
Hi, this is minimal because those 1 billion ads are not ‘paid’ ads. Advertisers don’t pay unless the ad is clicked on…so, do the math, this means that there are a LARGE number of publishers willing to TRY to make money from ads, it doesn’t mean that there are a LARGE number of advertisers actually paying out for ads.
Admob deserves a lot of credit for convincing publishers to try them out. They’ve made the process simple and easy to signup etc, but you have to dig a bit deeper to understand how the financials of the game work…
Admob is SO BAD!!! I have tryed their tool and is sooooo bad. Google will totally take over, lucky them that google has been sleepy in this regard. And the “billions of ads with no revenue” what a terrible business they have. Admod will disappear soon, they are running out of money from their last 15 mill I heard.
Admob is okay if you can tolerate their SLOW ASS customer service. It takes days for deposits in your account to appear and MORE DAYS for them to approve your ads!