AdMob has released its metrics report for May 2009 (PDF download link), and looked closely at the actual distribution of users of the iPhone apps in their network this time. The main take-away? There may be tens of thousands of applications available for the iPhone, but a whole lot of them simply never actually make it onto the device.
Out of 2,309 tracked applications (representing 15.1 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch users), no less than 54% are actively used by south of 1,000 persons. That’s a very long tail there, and not an economically interesting one at that. Only about 20% of the tracked apps have more than 10,000 active users, and only 5% (or 116 apps) boasts more than 100,000 active users. For the record, an active user is considered to be someone who used the app at least once in May.
Google is moving into the mobile ad market with AdSense for mobile apps. Over the past few months, Google has been testing both text and graphical ads with ten mobile app developers, including Shazam and Urbanspoon. Today it is opening the private beta to more developers who meet certain criteria.
These are contextual ads for iPhone and Android apps. To qualify for the public beta, the apps must be free and generate at least 100,000 pageviews per day. The program is only for iPhone or Android apps. Developers must be ready to go live with the ads in four weeks and participate for three months.
There have been questions as to whether iPhone developers can make significant revenue from ads on the iPhone, mainly because the supply of advertisers can’t keep up with the demand for iPhone apps. Others say that developers actually can make quite a bit from ads on free apps. Mobile game advertising network Greystripe is in that camp and it is launching a new CPM Protection Program designed to guarantee ad revenue to iPhone app developers.
Greystripe says that the various mobile ad networks, including competitor AdMob, are undercutting each others’ CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) when competing for advertising dollars, thus leaving iPhone app developers with lower CPMs overall. Greystripe’s CPM Protection Program offers to beat any other ad networks’ eCPM by at least 25% for 60 days.
While OpenTable had a very successful IPO yesterday, the IPO market might not open up for other tech startups for at least another year, says prolific Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway. He made the assessment in a video interview with Vator.tv’s Bambi Francisco on mobile startups, republished below.
Questioned on when he sees the IPO market open up again, Conway responds that he thinks we are at least one year away. He’s more bullish on the M&A market picking up again, expressing the hope that this is only six months away.
With more than 20,000 apps available for the iPhone, standing out from the crowd is becoming harder and harder for app developers. There are only so many slots in the the top apps lists in the iTunes Store. Discovering new apps is becoming a real problem. But what if apps started cross-promoting other apps, just like they do on Facebook?
AdMob, which claims to be the largest mobile ad network on the iPhone covering more than 1,000 apps, will be launching an iPhone App Exchange by the end of this month for any developer who is already part of its ad network. AdMob currently shows ads across 7.2 million iPhones. Developers will be able to volunteer a portion of the ad inventory on their apps to go towards promoting other apps. In return, their apps will be promoted on other apps in the network. Depending on whether monetization or distribution is more important to them, they will be able to adjust the settings on their AdMob account accordingly.
Mobile game advertising network Greystripe secured $5.5 million in Series C funding led by Incubic Venture Capital, Steamboat Ventures and Monitor Ventures. The company previously received a total of $10.1 million in Series A and B funding, with the same investors participating. Greystripe develops “advergames,” mobile ads that have game-like characteristics designed to increase the chances of consumers clicking on them. Greystripe has delivered 180 million ad-supported game and app downloads to date.
Greystripe has capitalized on strong growth in its mobile content distribution and monetization business, particularly with the iPhone. Greystripe is now trying to integrate mobile-centric ad campaigns with industry-accepted online media buying software. This unified integration allows for ad agencies to easily add mobile ads with one click and also allows for Flash advertisementsto appear on the iPhone (a technology that Greystripe developed). Ads can be used for both online and mobile purposes.
Mobile game ad network Greystripe has hit 140 million ad-supported game downloads thanks to iPhone users. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, it supported 30 million downloads. All of these ad-supported and Greystripe says that over 50 percent of ad impressions are from iPhone games. The ads themselves have game-like characteristics designed to increase teh chances of consumers clicking on them and playing with them, hence “advergames.”
Last summer, TechCrunch reported that Greystripe turned its attention to the iPhone, and is subsequently seeing an increase in downloads and ad impressions. In fact, Greystripe’s Top 10 Total Games (by ad impression) are all iPhone games. In December, the company created its own version of Adobe Flash for the iPhone, which Apple currently prohibits on the iPhone, that would allow advertisers to use rich media flash ads. The company is making the iPhone market a “priority for the foreseeable future,” finding that the device is a much more successful ad platform for gaming than Java devices.
The online advertising business is in for a rough patch, especially for display advertising. The signs are everywhere. Yahoo, the biggest publisher of display ads on the Web, reported a 2 percent decline in display ad revenues in the fourth quarter, and the New York Times is seeing even steeper declines.
There is just way too much advertising inventory out there, and Websites are actually trying to show less ads per page to reduce ad clutter and keep advertising rates from cratering. The chart above from comScore’s 2008 Digital Year in Review shows that the number of display ads served in the U.S. is actually slightly down from a year ago. Even so, comScore estimates that 4.5 trillion ads were served to U.S. consumers last year. That comes to 2,000 ads per month per person.
As a consequence of the declining display ad revenues and the over-saturation of ads, there is simply no need for the 300-plus ad networks out there. And what we are seeing now is the stronger ad networks are picking up funding to shore up their positions and the weaker ones are getting bought.
Each month, AdMob, a mobile advertising network, rounds up the data from over 6,000 mobile web sites and applications, analyzes it all, and releases their findings in their Mobile Metrics Report. In the September report, AdMob determined that the iPhone had become the #4 handset worldwide by count of ads requested. In the October release, the iPhone has skyrocketed all the way to #1.
Note that these rankings are not directly representative of sales numbers; while AdMob’s ad network is wide enough that these numbers can provide an accurate picture of usage trends, they don’t necessarily prove that one handset is outselling another.
AdMob, a popular mobile advertising platform, has closed a 15.7 million Series C funding round led by Sequoia’s Growth Fund with participation from Accel Partners. The company says that it will use the money to help expand abroad in India, South Africa, and Europe.
The round is a strong vote of confidence from Sequoia, especially given the fact that the famous firm recently presented its portfolio company CEOs with a 56 Slide Presentation of Doom that forecast dire economic conditions in Silicon Valley for years to come.
On the iPhone, even the ads are cool. Mobile advertising network AdMob is launching a whole new set of customized ads for iPhone apps. As CEO Omar Hamoui explains in the video above, the ads are specifically designed for iPhone apps. Rather than the static text or image ads that make up most of its mobile ad inventory today, these take advantage of specific features of the iPhone.
For instance, an ad for a song can stream the audio or launch the page on iTunes where you can buy it. A movie ad can open up YouTube so you can watch the trailer. An ad for a retailer can find nearby stores on Google maps. Others call a number through the phone, or can take you to a specific Web page. And just like on Facebook,where many of the ads on apps are simply promotions for other apps, an ad for an iPhone app will launch the App Store. (See video below).
To get iPhone app developers to sign up for his new ads, Hamoui is giving away $1 million worth of advertising to the developers with the most compelling apps who apply here. Each developer who is selected will recieve $5,000 worth of free ads for their apps.
Admob already serves up 34 million mobile ads a month on the iPhone’s Safari browser. But that is a mere one percent of the total that AdMob serves across all phones. Hamoui, however, believes that the new type of ads he is launching today will quickly make up the majority of his inventory. Some of the advertisers he’s already lined up include Ford, Electronic Arts, Land Rover, Jaguar, “The Mummy,” Loopt, AccuWeather.com, and MovieTickets.com.
With the 3G iPhone about to go on sale tomorrow, mobile ad startup AdMob is releasing some data on its iPhone ad network. Since it launched the network back in July, 2007, AdMob has served 249 million ads to people’s first-generation iPhones. Last month alone, it served 52 million ads worldwide and 34 million in the U.S. The monthly growth those numbers is up 32 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
To put this in perspective, though, AdMob serves 3.5 billion ads each month across all models. So iPhone ads in the U.S. represent only one percent of that total.
The question is whether that growth will continue, or whether AdMob’s phone-specific ads will be superceded by regular Web ads. After all, the iPhone has a fully functioning browser that shows the same ads you see on your desktop.
One question is whether it is a better advertising vehicle than other phones. Another is what form will those ads take. Do advertisers need to create special ads tuned for the iPhone? Or can they just buy regular Web ads and assume that people will see them in the iPhone’s fully-featured browser? Silicon Alley Insider raised this question earlier in the week, noting:
. . . an iPhone’s browser loads an ad the same way a computer does — not the same way a Motorola Razr does. So if the iPhone is just loading a normal Internet ad in a custom size, there’s no real need for a special mobile ad network.
In a comment on that post, AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui responds:
You essentially assume that simply because “regular” ads can be served, they will inherently be optimal. . . . The reality is that . . . ads designed for the web as viewed from a PC are not and will not be optimal.
Although the idea of a unified web where everything is exactly the same (including advertising) is intriguing, the reality is that all the recent advancements in digital advertising (search, behavioral, demographic, and psychographic targeting, etc…) have been about differentiation of audiences rather than amalgamation. In the context of advertising, there is significant value locked up in even subtle differences and we know from experience that the device you are browsing on is no subtle difference.
Whether regular ad networks can play that game remains to be seen. But AdMob already tunes its ads for the specific phone model that the ad is being sent to. The current set of iPhone ads, for example, take advantage of the iPhone’s large touch screen to draw those interested deeper into an ad. And they can also trigger some of the iPhone’s special features, such as launching a Google map. For instance, in the Jaguar ad below, the Google map shows nearby Jaguar dealerships.
Similarly, ads that let you make a phone call for more information or to order the item being advertised are different than most banner ads (although some of those have click-to-call features too, it stands to reason that a click-to-call ad would work better on a phone). And in fact, the company claims that the response rates of these iPhone ads are better than other mobile ads.
With the 3G iPhone coming out with new features and a whole slew of apps, AdMob needs to keep up with the changes in the device. Advertisers will flock to wherever they can get the best response rates. The more that AdMob can tune its ads to the specific location and experience of the viewer, the better the response rates should be. I will ask Hamoui how he plans on doing this at the upcoming Mobile Web Wars Roundtable that I will be hosting.
Mobile phone ad platform provider AdMob has launched AdMob Mobile Analytics, a Google Analytics style service for mobile advertising.
AdMob Mobile Analytics offers businesses a free solution to maximize commerce, advertising and content on the mobile Internet. AdMob Mobile Analytics helps mobile site owners understand their audience, optimize their content and improve usability. The suite allows users to track site performance metrics such as unique visitors, duration of visit, page performance, as well as user details including geography, operator and device specifics. This information helps mobile site owners tune their sites to the specific consumers visiting their mobile Web presence.
Notably, the service is ad provider agnostic: users can track campaigns by any provider as well as ad campaigns from AdMob.
These look like standard image ads for desktop web pages but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile content network. Take a look at the mobile image ads example page to see samples….For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page. For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility.
Banner sizes in actual size per the picture right.
The new offering from Google places the company up against Yahoo, AdMob and others in offering a full range of mobile advertising options.
There’s a market for this style of ad, but how big is the unknown question, particularly at a time where mobile phones are moving towards a full browser experience instead of a cut down version.
The other consideration: how many people click on ads on their phones? I straw polled a hand full of people when this question came up months back and I couldn’t find one person who could remember clicking on an advertising on their mobile phone…accept for the odd accidental tap. Would you?
San Mateo based mobile phone advertising provider AdMob has passed the 20 billion ads served mark.
Since March 2007 the company’s monthly impressions have grown from 500 million ads per month to 2.5 billion advertisements per month today. AdMob’s 20 billionth ad impression was from financial services conglomerate HDFC. The ad was served in India at 1:56am GMT on Tuesday, March 25, while a visitor was browsing Cricinfo’s mobile web site on a Nokia N70.
We’ve covered AdMob a couple of times, but it’s a company doing some big numbers that we don’t hear that much about. Their client list is first rate: companies currently using AdMob include Porsche, Ford, Toyota, Adidas, CoverGirl, Herbal Essence, EA Sims, Terminix, TruGreen and Let’s Talk. Where it gets better (and why this is a company just waiting to be bought out) is two key clients: Google and Yahoo. The web’s two leading companies are using AdMob to advertise their services on mobile phones.
A iPhone focused LandRover campaign powered by San Mateo based mobile advertising startup AdMob has seen some interesting results (video demo above).
AdAge has some details on the campaign here, but I obtained some raw figures from AdMob. Of those users who clicked on the Land Rover advertisement, 23% responded to at least one call-to-action on the landing page. 88% of those users watched the video, 9% entered their zip code to find a nearby Land Rover dealership and 3% used the click-2-call action, all of who were highly qualified leads. Of the 3% who clicked to call through the advertisement, 50% of the calls lasted more than 30 seconds and 20% of the calls lasted for more than a minute. Sales figures from the campaign were not available, but consider that the campaign was only 400,000 impressions; if LandRover had managed to sell one or two cars it would make the campaign more than effective.
The results would seem to indicate that the iPhone has become a more effective means of targeted mobile advertising campaigns than regular phones; the integration with Google Maps and the display of video provides a richer experience for both the viewer, and for the company seeking to expose their product.
San Mateo based mobile advertising solutions provider AdMob has announced AdMob for Facebook Mobile, a mobile advertising solution for developers of third-party Facebook applications.
AdMob has enabled optimized mobile ads for Facebook Mobile, which developers can use to monetize their mobile applications. Developers can start showing ads and earning money immediately.
AdMob for Facebook Mobile is said to be the first monetization solution for Facebook Mobile developers. AdMob is now serving 1.5 billion ads a month, up from the 1 billion they were serving when we first wrote about them in August.
AdMob Investors include Sequoia and Accel Partners and management includes staff previously with eBay, YouTube and Google.
Mobile advertising firm AdMob will today welcome former engineering manager at Google Kevin Scott to its executive team. Scott will be responsible for software engineering and operations as AdMob builds its infrastructure to enable billions of targeted mobile banner and text ads.
Scott was Senior Engineering Manager for Google, where he led Google’s advertising quality engineering efforts focused on improving the relevance of ads to users and increasing ROI for advertisers. Scott’s time at Google also included M&A work for two successful acquisitions, establishment of the annual Google Faculty summit, and creation of a number of leadership development and engineering education programs.
Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob told TechCrunch that they are thrilled to have someone with Scott’s experience join their startup. “Kevin brings unparalleled experience building ad servers that maximize targeting and quality. Adding Kevin validates and empowers AdMob’s approach and leadership on the challenges of targeting and optimization for the mobile environment.”
AdMob is currently in the process of introducing new mobile advertising capabilities around mobile-specific targeting and relevance. We first wrote about AdMob in August where we noted that AdMob had seemingly slipped under the radar in terms of attention whilst competitors have been acquired. Admob currently serves over 1 billion mobile ads a month.
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 has released its metrics report for May 2009 (PDF download link), and looked closely at the actual distribution of users of the iPhone apps in their network this time. The main take-away? There may be tens of thousands of applications available for the iPhone, but a whole lot of them simply never actually make it onto the device.
Banner sizes in actual size per the picture right.
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