The Guide to the App Galaxy, which we showed off last week at Google I/O, is designed to help mobile app developers—regardless of platform—navigate the complexities of launching an app and building a business on mobile. As you maneuver through the "galaxy” using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you’ll get the basics about app promotion, monetization and measurement—with tips from Google as well as successful developers.
There’s no exact blueprint for mobile app success and no developer’s journey is the same, which is why The Guide to the App Galaxy contains different advice and best practices from developers around the world. Here are some key insights from developers who have successfully built a business on mobile:
Rovio Mobile
Making money on mobile is not black and white—there's actually a lot of color. There are a number of business model options that aren't exclusive to any particular platforms.
Best, Cool & Fun Games
Offering your app for free lowers the barrier for users to download and try your app. The free version of Ant Smasher went viral because players could easily recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.
The Weather Channel
Don't forget to think beyond mobile. If you have a website or even a television channel, you can cross-promote your app with banner advertising or in-show mentions to drive downloads.
If you’re a developer who has successfully navigated the App Galaxy and launched your own app, you’ve probably picked up some tips of your own. Share your insights by creating your own journey and sharing it with your friends. We might even feature your story on The Guide to the App Galaxy.
The Guide to the App Galaxy is currently available in English, Japanese, Korean, French and German. We’re continuing to expand the guide to other developers around the world with new languages and new content like case study journeys. For more information about our solutions for mobile app developers, visit www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/about.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first Google I/O as a Googler and speaker. It was a high-energy event and lots of mobile developers interested in building a business on mobile stopped by our Office Hours. Additionally, the videos from two sessions we hosted are now available:
Learn how to build a business on mobile apps so you can quit your day job. Walk away with an understanding of app business basics and how to use house ads for app promotion, mediation to optimize in-app advertising revenues and analytics to measure real ROI.
Watch our experts integrate the Google AdMob Ads SDK across Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. Learn integration tips and tricks so you can start making money from your app today.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch all the announcements and excitement in-person or via the live-stream, we hope you’ll get a chance to experience it by visiting the Google I/O website.
Posted by Wayne Pan, Software Engineer for Mobile Display Advertising
“What gluten-free cake mixes taste the best?”
“Where can I buy allergy medicine at 11:00PM?”
“Which diaper brand is on sale this week?”
What do these questions have in common?
1. They all imply a purchase will be made in the near future.
2. They can all be answered using your mobile device.
Recently, Google’s Jim Lecinski and Brian McDevitt spoke at the In-Store Marketing Institutes's annual Shopper Marketing Summit. The duo discussed the impact of mobile on the path-to-purchase process and what this shift means for marketers.
Jim Lecinski, Google's Managing Director, U.S. Sales and Service, kicked off the session by stating that mobile’s role in the path-to-purchase is actually very simple. Shoppers rely on the mobile web to research products and services both pre-store and in-store. And when shoppers read reviews or find weekly deals online, this information can change what they buy and where they buy it. In fact, 79% of smartphone users use smartphones to help them shop and 74% have purchased due to using their smartphone while shopping (Google’s “Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” study 2011).
Because the mobile Internet has a direct impact on consumer purchase decisions, it is critically important for marketers to have a mobile presence when their target shoppers are in mobile errand planning and buying mode.
Continuing the presentation, Brian McDevitt, Google's Mobile Display Ads Lead, shared a scenario of the mobile-mom-of-the-not-too-distant future using her mobile device to plan for her son’s birthday party. Through the course of her day, she experiences:
A Mobile Website that helps her find the right product, quickly and easily.
Mobile Brand Applications that assist her in tracking down the right recipe to serve her guests.
Mobile Retailer Applications that show her weekly deals at local stores
Third Party Applications & Sites that enable her to build shopping lists across retailers, provide coupons and give suggestions for relevant products
Google Maps or Ads with Location Extensions that help with navigation to local stores
Google Mobile Search & Display Ads that connect the entire experience so it’s easy to find relevant information on a mobile site or application.
And the great part is that this fictional mom could exist today. All of these mobile capabilities and more are available now to create a seamless mobile shopping experience for your customers.
Wrapping up the session, Jim laid it on the line when he said, “Mobile is the key to shopper marketing.” I happen to agree.
Posted by Katrina Shonbeck, Mobile Display Account Planner
As many online content providers are moving their content to mobile apps and sites, monetizing this new platform provides a new set of challenges. TV Guide Digital was getting their feet wet in mobile before the iPhone even existed. Christy Tanner, GM of TV Guide Digital, shares her insights into building a successful business on mobile.
With nearly 4 million app downloads across Android, iPhone and iPad, Tanner sees mobile as becoming an increasingly important part of TV Guide Digital’s business. Christy Tanner points out, “we took our time to get the app right - we have loyal customers with high expectations and made sure the app met those customer needs prior to launch.” Additionally, she warns newcomers to mobile that the development cycle is almost as fast as their online business.
Interview with Christy Tanner, GM TV Guide Digital
To keep users engaged with the apps, TV Guide is constantly providing new content and features to keep users engaged. Therefore an ad-supported business model makes sense to support this ongoing process. Yet, while the company has grown its mobile footprint, training ad sales teams to sell mobile ad space takes time. Tanner notes, “it is great to have the AdMob network to rely on when we have unsold inventory. AdMob is currently giving us the highest eCPMs of any ad network we work with and the customer service has been great.”
As Christy Tanner looks ahead, she is bullish on mobile and excited to expand TV Guide’s mobile offering to continue to meet user needs. As she sees more users interacting with multiple screens simultaneously, she hopes to see more advertisers leverage this opportunity to reach users in new, creative and engaging ways.
This is a follow-up to the recent post that Doug Yeum, Director of Business Development, shared last month on mobile trends unique to South Korea.
Three weeks ago, we wrote about mobile in South Korea. We explored 2010 as a tipping point for smartphone growth with a 67x increase in monthly traffic. This growth has led to the emergence of data-rich services and growing mobile media consumption by the South Korean consumer. Since the post, we've received requests to dive deeper into the South Korean market so we've produced a mobile metrics report on South Korea. The report looks at trends in the AdMob network in South Korea and includes data from a localized survey of 524 mobile Internet users. The results of the survey reflect surprisingly strong usage patterns and levels of engagement with the mobile Internet:
29% of respondents spend more than one hour a day using the mobile Internet
35% of respondents spend more time using the mobile Internet than watching TV; 24% more than using the desktop Internet
Using the phone for entertainment is more popular than texting, phone calls or social networking
58% of respondents access the mobile Internet at least 5 times a day:
We’re excited about the momentum of the mobile ecosystem in South Korea, and believe that the pace of its growth creates considerable opportunities for advertisers and publishers.
Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Voyages-sncf.com – the online travel agency of French rail giant SNCF – found that 51% of its mobile internet users book tickets for travel the day before or day of departure. It’s clear that mobile is the ideal medium for delivering services to customers precisely when they need them most. A mobile-optimised transactional site that launched in 2007 already attracts two million unique visitors per month, but to provide the best possible user experience Voyages-sncf.com launched an iPhone app last year.
Once they’d made this initial investment, the next challenge was to encourage maximum downloads. Rather than tacking mobile onto existing campaigns, we worked with Voyages-sncf.com to craft a well-defined mobile advertising strategy to complement their email marketing communications
Google, with the AdMob network, offered the opportunity for Voyages-sncf.com to use a variety of innovative ad formats which made the most of the medium to drive direct response. So in addition to a classic CPC banner, we implemented an animated multi-panel banner, an expandable banner and an interstitial ad. The campaign required a broad reach into iPhone users in France, and the extensive AdMob network provided this too.
Voyages-sncf.com aimed to achieve 15,000 downloads in the month of December, but the app smashed all expectations by actually hitting 87,000 downloads over that period. Of these, 70,000 were generated by customer newsletters and communications. The 10-day AdMob campaign delivered 50,789 clicks, which generated 17,000 downloads, representing an impressive conversion rate of 33.5%.
Find out how to replicate the success of Voyages-sncf.com by reading the full case study here.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are growing in popularity and changing the way that we consume content. People are spending considerable time with tablet devices and using them to play games, browse the web and search for information. Growth in the tablet market is only accelerating with companies releasing new products, and media companies and developers creating content specifically for these new devices.
In order to better understand how people are using tablets we ran a survey of over 1,400 tablet users and found that:
68% of tablet users spend at least 1 hour a day on their tablet
77% of respondents report that their desktop/laptop usage decreased after they started using a tablet
82% of respondents said they primarily use their tablet at home
More than 1 in 3 respondents uses their tablet more than they watch TV:
These new usage patterns have strong implications for marketers and content creators. In the AdMob network alone, traffic from tablets has grown 300% in the past six months. Considering the numerous planned launches of new tablets in 2011, we’re excited to watch the traffic from tablets grow as consumers continue to adopt this new category of devices.
Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
One of the three core principles of our mobile ads business is ‘inclusiveness’; advertisers and developers should have access to the tools they need to reach users across many mobile platforms. More than 50,000 mobile applications across iOS, Android, and webOS platforms currently use AdMob’s monetization tools, and today, we’re excited to further expand our developer offerings with the launch of our beta SDK for Windows Phone 7.
With the Windows Phone 7 SDK, developers can easily integrate advertising into their applications, control where the ads appear, and what types of ads are shown in their apps. The SDK supports text and banner ads with a variety of post click actions including opening a webpage and linking directly to the App Marketplace.
We have also taken steps to customize the ad experience for the look and feel of the Windows Phone 7 platform and make it easy for users to return to their application after engaging with the ad. Publishers can download the new SDK today by logging into their AdMob account and adding a site type of Windows Phone 7.
In addition to the new beta Windows Phone 7 SDK, we’re also updating our existing iOS and Android SDKs. The new SDKs include enhanced HTML5 support for ad units that enable advertisers to create more engaging, richer ads and in turn, an improved user experience. We’re also now supporting full screen interstitial formats for tablets on iOS and Android.
Publishers can download the new SDKs by logging into their accounts and selecting “Get Publisher Code” from the Manage Settings of their app. We encourage all publishers to upgrade during their next development cycle to ensure they are using the latest version of the code and maximizing their revenue opportunities.
Posted by Mark Schaaf, Director of Engineering, Mobile Ads
At Google’s Think Mobile Event last month, brands and agencies had a chance to reflect on recent successes they’ve had with mobile advertising. Jared Hopfer, Associate Director from Mobext, the mobile marketing arm of MPG and Media Contacts, shared his observations with us that day.
In the video below, Mr. Hopfer recounts how he worked with Google’s AdMob team to execute a mobile branding strategy for Volvo Cars of North America. To build excitement around the launch of Volvo’s S60 sedan, Mobext relied heavily on mobile interactive video ads. The campaign delivered significant brand lift and users spent a minute on average interacting with the video ads, akin to two 30-second spots.
As it turned out, the program became a pivotal point in how Volvo and Mobext used mobile advertising. Before the campaign, they viewed mobile primarily as a direct response channel to drive visitors to dealerships. In light of their recent successes, both agency and advertiser now see mobile as a branding mainstay and have added mobile to several upcoming branding and engagement programs. For more details on their story, download the full case study.
Posted by Ben Chung, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
According to Nielsen, YouTube is the #1 mobile video website in the US, with millions of users watching video from a mobile device every day. As mobile video viewership continues to grow rapidly, we are now extending the popular YouTube Brand Channel from YouTube desktop to reach and engage users on high-end devices, including iPhone and Android phones.
Mobile Brand Channels allow advertisers to create a customized mobile brand experience within YouTube. Users can share videos, save to a playlist, subscribe to the channel and rate content through the “thumbs up” YouTube feature. Mobile-specific banners create a wallpaper effect and also enable advertisers to link their Brand Channel to another mobile website.
Brand Channels are discoverable by searching on m.youtube.com. Advertisers can also promote their Brand Channel through mobile advertising on the Google search or display network, as well as YouTube Mobile.
Hyundai Motor America is one of the first advertisers to create a YouTube Mobile Brand Channel. To maximize user engagement, they customized their channel with a mobile-specific banner, promotional text and featured video. To drive traffic to their new mobile experience, Hyundai is running mobile advertising on the AdMob network and also purchased a roadblock of m.youtube.com for 100% share of voice of the mobile YouTube audience.
We congratulate Hyundai on a great mobile video experience and look forward to working with more brands to promote YouTube video content on mobile.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
Until recently, Guilherme Schvartsman was an investment banker with a successful career in the financial market. At the same time, he was keenly interested in the exponential growth in high-end mobile devices and apps, especially in his native country, Brazil. In 2009, Guilherme started developing iPhone applications in 2009 in his free time. Soon after, he founded Best, Cool & Fun Games to focus on developing mobile games full-time. The company is currently one of the top mobile gaming companies in Latin America, with a portfolio of more than 30 casual games played by 10 million users around the world. We are excited to have Guilherme as a guest author to share his top five things that every app developer should know.
#1 - Use advertising to grow traffic and get discovered
Many apps are discovered when users are searching or browsing on their mobile device, often browsing top ranked applications lists in the Android Market and App Store. With over hundreds of thousands of apps available for download, how do you get your app to stand out in the crowded marketplace? Be sure to promote your app because I’ve seen so many good apps go unnoticed. There are many options for promoting your mobile app, but one of the easiest is mobile advertising. Mobile advertising helps with getting your app discovered and installed, which in turn helps you stand out in the crowded app marketplace. With AdMob mobile advertising, I was able to get front and center across a network of over 50,000 apps and sites to promote Ant Smasher. Promoting my app was really easy and I was instantly able to see the impact of my advertising campaigns through real-time reporting in AdMob. This allowed me to optimize my ad spend accordingly. Using mobile advertising, I was able to drive significant download volumes for Ant Smasher (close to 50% of all downloads), which was key for getting ranked in the top app store lists.
#2 - You can make money by giving away your product for free
Keep in mind that many users won’t spend a nickle for a game, so offering your app for free and serving ads is a great way to let everyone play your game. It may seem counter intuitive but you can earn sustainable revenues by giving away your product for free. We were getting downloads and earning money when we initially launched the paid version of Ant Smasher for $0.99. However, when we started offering a limited version of the app for free and using AdMob to serve ads, we quickly discovered that the bulk of revenues were coming from ads displayed in the app. As a result, we quickly re-evaluated our business strategy offering the full version of Ant Smasher for free while relying on ads for monetization. Today, most of the apps in our portfolio are offered to users at no cost, and we rely on an ad-supported business model. Ant Smasher currently garners $2 million annualized revenues, with 80% coming from ads, primarily via AdMob.
#3 - It’s all in the little details
Ant Smasher started off as a fun idea where the user squishes ants on a tabletop. I wanted to build a simple game that would be easy to learn, yet a challenge for users to master. Beyond just having a fun idea, I tested it with various users who found it endlessly fun to play before starting to build the app. We also knew that smartphone users are a tough crowd to please. They want instant satisfaction, no bugs or glitches, and flawless performance. So we spent a lot of time on the little details that make Ant Smasher delight users. We kept the game simple, and focused on gameplay and graphics, hiring a UI designer. The end result was an addictive app with realistic looking ants and squishing sound effects that keep users engaged and coming back.
#4 - Ride the social wave
Remember, for an app to “go viral” it needs to offer something valuable to the user. Be it a useful utility or endless hours of fun, it also has to be easy for users to share. By offering your product for free, you essentially lower the barrier for users to download and try your app. When we released the free version of Ant Smasher, it went viral because it was easy for players to recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.
#5 - Leverage house ads
House ads are a great advertising tool that often goes underutilized. It enables app developers to cross-promote their own apps using their own mobile inventory. Conversion rates also tend to be higher and house ads can be used to fill excess inventory. We used house ads with AdMob to cross-promote the paid version of Ant Smasher in the free version and inside other apps within our portfolio. On average, Ant Smasher click-through rate is 6.5% with one in six clickthroughs resulting in an app purchase. Additionally, we used our house ads performance to benchmark our paid advertising at no cost. It helped us know where to invest budget and how to better optimize our paid advertising campaigns.
Mobile is such an exciting industry, and it’s different from anything else I’ve ever done. With smartphone adoption taking off globally and the rapid growth of mobile apps, it’s an exciting time to be an app developer. The possibilities to build a business on mobile are endless and the barriers to entry are low. I hope app developers of all sizes find these tips useful -- I sure wish I had these before I quit my day job!
Editor’s note: You can try Ant Smasher for yourself by downloading the latest version for iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) or Android. For more information about AdMob, please visit www.admob.com. For Latin American based developers interested in AdMob, please visit http://goo.gl/HjMe7.
Posted by Guilherme Schvartsman, Founder & CEO, Best, Cool & Fun Games
Recently, we’ve given you a glimpse of some of the growth that AdMob has seen over the last few months. Here are some highlights, and a few new metrics:
The AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day. This represents an increase of more than 4x in the last twelve months.
Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than one billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from one country just a year ago.
The 10 countries in Western Europe with the most ad requests all experienced a greater than 400% growth in ad requests in 2010.
More than half of AdMob's top 50 brand advertising campaigns in December 2010 used the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
Ad Impressions for AdMob grew more than 500% in the past year from the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
There are now over 50,000 publishers in the AdMob network that support their mobile businesses with mobile advertising (NEW)
Hundreds of mobile publishers, including Angry Birds, are earning over $100,000 per month from AdMob ads.
AdMob’s growth is a reflection of our advertisers’ and publishers’ success with mobile display advertising.
Here’s an example of how AdMob is helping to generate great results for our clients. As part of their effort to promote their new S60, Volvo and their mobile agency, Mobext, the mobile marketing arm for Media Contacts and MPG, worked with AdMob to develop new rich media ad units. Volvo included a great video interstitial (check it out below) and an engaging, easy to navigate mobile website, and was able to accomplish their marketing goals as a result.
The results speak for themselves. Volvo’s cross-platform campaign saw CTRs of 3.91%, and after the campaign, users expressed a 240% increase in brand favorability, 88% increase in purchase intent, and a 78% increase in recommendation intent. More importantly, this campaign changed the way the car-maker has approached mobile marketing, in general. According to Linda Gangeri, Manager, National Advertising, Volvo,
"The interactive video ads encouraged deep consumer engagement and higher response rates compared to other media running during this same time. With the proliferation of smartphone devices, this is an area that we'll continue to invest in and expect to see continued growth."
That display campaigns like Volvo’s, sophisticated by desktop standards, are now running on mobile, is a very significant development, and reminds us how much progress mobile advertising has made. It also inspires us to keep innovating; no matter how far mobile advertising has come, we’ve still only scratched the surface.
We've been doing some work in the UK to promote the woZZon mobile application to Android users that highlights how geo-targeting can provide great returns for advertisers. WoZZon is one of the UK's largest events listings database, providing information on films, theatre, concerts, exhibitions, comedy, clubs, dance, opera, family days out and community events.
To demonstrate woZZon's insight into local events across the UK, woZZon teamed up with digital agency Yodel to develop a location-based mobile advertising campaign running on popular Android applications on our network. Together, we created geo-targeted regional banner ads offering city-specific messages for users in seven major UK cities. For example – ‘Free app for movies in London’ or 'Fancy a day out in Manchester?'
For Android users outside of these cities, a slightly more generic banner ad was displayed, such as ‘Free app for local concerts'. To find out more about the woZZon application and to download it, users simply had to click on the banner and they were taken directly through to the download page.
click to enlarge image
This highly-targeted location-based approach meant that woZZon was able to identify areas across the UK where the app was particularly popular and focus its ad spend accordingly. Taking this geo-located approach also helped to increase downloads significantly. The localised ads were found to generate CTR and CTD rates that were 85 percent higher than those achieved by the more generic nationwide ads. Before the launch of the mobile advertising campaign, the woZZon app was 89th in the Android UK download charts. Once the campaign kicked off, the app quickly jumped up to 11th in the travel download chart. It remained in the Top 15 throughout the course of the month. As a result, woZZon is experiencing more than double the amount of daily downloads than prior to the launch of the campaign. To learn more about woZZon, please download the full case study pdf.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Last week, we shared in the regional breakdown for the 2 billion daily ad requests on the AdMob network. As shown in the data, the rapid growth that we highlighted is not restricted to any one country or market. Throughout this quarter, we’ll be posting perspectives from different markets to learn about unique country trends, challenges and opportunities in mobile.
This week we have a guest post from Peter Fernandez, who leads mobile advertising partnerships for Latin America across the Google Mobile Ads and AdMob products, on his perspective on the latest mobile trends in Brazil.
Brazil has one of the largest populations of mobile phone users in the world and last year we saw a significant increase in the number of Brazilians accessing the Internet on these devices. This is likely driven by operator investments in infrastructure and significant price drops in mobile data prices, including pre-paid services. For the first time, operators have seen revenue from data plans exceed revenue from messaging services. Given that less than a quarter of Brazilian households have fixed broadband access, mobile is poised to become an important Internet access point in the future.
What are these millions of Brazilians doing when they connect to the mobile Internet? In just the past year Google mobile search traffic in Brazil has increased over 500%, whereas Google mobile search traffic has grown over 5x globally in the last two years. Similarly, we’ve seen an 1251% increase in ad requests on our AdMob display network in the last year. The usage is not restricted by device types either. The majority of Brazil’s mobile subscribers own feature (WAP) phones, and a lot of the growth we’re seeing is coming from these devices. However, high end devices such as those running the Android and iOS operating systems are growing quickly as well in terms of both ad requests and unique users.
Application developers are playing a big role in driving Brazil’s fast growth in mobile Internet usage by creating the compelling mobile content that these millions of consumers are engaging with everyday. Last year, we saw tremendous interest from the local, vibrant developer community when we hosted our largest ever Google Developer Day in Sao Paulo. Hundreds of Brazilian app developers are using mobile advertising to grow their businesses, such as Best, Cool & Fun Games who saw a tenfold increase in revenue from mobile advertising in 2010. We are thrilled with this success and are excited to continue helping developers build a business on mobile.
As more Brazilian consumers spend more time on their mobile devices, advertisers need to think about how they should tailor their marketing to reach this growing mobile audience. Today, advertisers can reach millions of users in Brazil who are searching on Google from their mobile devices. To connect with these consumers, there are three things that advertisers should focus on when going mobile:
Create separate mobile campaigns. The first step to reaching mobile users is to separate mobile ad campaigns from desktop campaigns - globally we've seen that these campaigns perform better because advertisers have more control over their bids and budgets and can make better use of mobile-specific ad features.
Optimize landing page experience. Advertisers need to be sure that their landing pages are optimized for mobile. They can do this by either creating a new mobile landing page or making sure their desktop pages render well on the mobile screen.
Don’t forget about feature (WAP) phones. Much of the growth in 2010 came from mobile users who are searching on feature phones. Be sure that you are reaching these users by creating WAP mobile search ads for your mobile campaigns.
While we are thrilled about the mobile growth that we saw in 2010, we think that 2011 will be even more impressive for Brazil. To learn more about our advertising solutions or about how to earn money from mobile advertising, visit www.google.com/mobileads.
Posted by Peter Fernandez, Mobile Sales Lead for Latin America
We recently shared data on the explosive growth of the AdMob network last year. In 2010 we saw ad requests quadruple with every region and almost every country in the world contributing to that total growth number. Since then we’ve had a number of requests for a more detailed breakdown of exactly where in the world the growth is coming from. While the AdMob network generates monthly ad requests from more than 190 countries, 17 countries account for more than 80% percent of total traffic in December 2010.
When we looked at the growth by country within the regions in 2010 some interesting trends emerged. Most regions had 2-3 countries that accounted for more than half of total ad requests. The remainder of the requests across these regions were spread across a set of smaller, but generally more rapidly growing countries. Highlights include:
Three countries - India (26%), South Korea (13%) and Japan (12%) - accounted for just more than half of ad requests from Asia in December 2010. Five countries in Asia - South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore and Thailand - had growth rates of more than 1000% in 2010.
Two countries - Mexico (31%) and Brazil (26%) - drove more than half the ad requests in Latin America in December 2010. Brazil’s growth in 2010 far outpaced that of any other country in the region at 1251%.
Three countries - the UK (33%), France (17%) and Germany (12%) drove more than 60% of ad requests from Western Europe in December 2010. The top 10 countries in Western Europe all experienced a greater than 400% growth rate in 2010.
Three countries - Nigeria (21%), South Africa (21%) and Egypt (12%) - accounted for more than half of the ad requests from Africa in December 2010. Sudan experienced the most explosive growth in Africa at 2466%, but started from a small base and only accounted for 6% of African requests in 2010.
For a more detailed look at each region, check out the attached presentation. Note that this data is based solely on ad requests in the AdMob network of mobile web sites and iPhone, Android, webOS, and Flash Lite applications.
2011 is poised to be another break-out year for mobile as more consumers become more engaged with Internet content - from mobile sites to applications - on their mobile devices.
Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
In the latter part of last year Lovestruck.com, one of the UK’s leading dating websites on mobile and desktop, came to us with quite a challenge. The location-aware dating site wanted to promote its free iPhone application to users in London, and only in London. We often get asked to run campaigns in one country or on specific handsets, but this was the first time that we had been asked to focus a campaign on one city, in the UK.
The campaign kicked off in May 2010 and ran across our network of mobile websites and iPhone applications. However, unlike other campaigns, the ads promoting the Lovestruck.com app were only shown to iPhone users in London. To get the app, users simply had to click on the banner ad and they were taken through to the App Store download page for the Lovestruck.com app.
click to enlarge image
For Lovestruck.com the key benefit of this geo-targeted approach was that it allowed them to align the campaign with the company's strategy of expanding its membership base in the UK's capital city. But this wasn't the only benefit that Lovestruck.com saw. The campaign generated a far greater return on investment than other nationwide campaigns, as it was able to target potential users more closely.
The campaign exceeded expectations considerably. Cost per Downloads (CPD) were more than 76 percent lower than expected. This meant that we were able to work with mobile media agency Fetch Media to immediately scale the campaigns, increasing budget by more than 60 percent.
Lovestruck.com was so happy with the results of the campaign that it now spends 40 percent of its marketing budget on mobile, and has rolled out similar geo-targeted campaigns in Singapore and Hong Kong. To download the full Lovestruck case study, please click this link.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
The AdMob team at Google recently worked with the Coca-Cola Company to produce alive wallpaper celebrating the holiday season based on their annual holiday commercial. Live wallpapers are animated homescreen backgrounds that respond to both touch and phone movement, and can also react to the time of day and a device’s geographic location. This is the first time the AdMob team has worked with an advertiser on creating this type of mobile experience.
Coke’sannual holiday commercial features Santa in his workshop, surrounded by snowglobes displaying various winter cityscapes. Santa brings holiday cheer to the characters in the snowglobe by tilting the globes to bring together couples and families under a snowy winter sky. Coke’s live wallpaper takes the user into this snowglobe experience. You can visit scenes from the video and tilt your phone to move the characters, just like Santa. Shaking your phone twirls the snow around, turning your Android phone into the snowglobe Santa interacts with in the holiday commercial! This experience is truly interactive and fun for the customer, while also providing a powerful branding opportunity and bridging marketing efforts across different channels. Advertisers have the chance to be the first thing a user sees when unlocking their phone or exiting from a mobile app.
Coke will be promoting this live wallpaper experience through a mobile display advertising campaign on the AdMob network. AdMob allows advertisers to target Android users as they use applications and browse the mobile web from their phone. By sending users directly to the Android Market, Coke maximizes their live wallpaper conversion rate. This reach ensures that the most people possible will be able to enjoy the wallpaper throughout the holiday season.
The video below shows how you can download the Coke wallpaper from an auto-play interactive video ad on the AdMob Network.
You can download the Coke live wallpaper byvisiting the Android Market from your mobile device.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
It’s clear that consumers have become more and more dependent on their smartphones to help them conquer their endless to-do lists and get their shopping done. We believe there’s a huge opportunity to bridge the gap between online and offline for all businesses big and small, especially during the busy holiday season.
Two weeks ago we ran a survey of consumers on the AdMob network to gain insight into how smartphone users in the US are engaging with their mobile devices for holiday shopping. The survey received more than 200 responses and the results should be taken as directional. Some of the interesting survey findings include:
53% of respondents said they use their mobile device to look up information on a product while in a store and then later purchase the product online.
45% of respondents said they use their mobile device in addition to their desktop for holiday shopping.
45% of respondents have spent at least $10 on a purchase via their mobile device. 34% have spent more than $20. Respondents said they were most likely to make purchases via their mobile device for products or services that fall into the entertainment, technology and travel categories.
29% said that their mobile device is replacing their desktop for holiday shopping (researching products, purchasing products, finding retailers).
The most popular activity among respondents using their mobile device for holiday shopping was comparing prices (31% of respondents).
Our recently launched Mobile Offer Ads product is part of our commitment to helping bridge mobile advertising and commerce. We’re excited about this space and we plan to continue focusing on connecting retailers to their mobile consumers.
Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
It’s no secret that mobile websites and applications are a great way to engage customers on their mobile phone. As a one stop destination for cutting edge tech gadget and video game news and information, G4 considers mobile an extremely important extension of the G4 brand. Developing mobile applications has allowed G4 to experience close to the same levels of usage on mobile as on the desktop platform. With the tremendous growth of Android devices in the market and increased user demand, developing an Android app was a no-brainer for G4.
In order to quickly grow Android app adoption at launch, G4 used a variety of marketing activities to drive installs. They ran on-air and in-show promotions and took advantage of house ad inventory to drive awareness with their core users. To reach new customers, G4 used mobile display advertising on the AdMob network. AdMob helped G4 easily reach engaged Android users on their phone, where they could be easily converted into app users. Mobile is one of the few platforms where this kind of immediacy can be achieved.
While internal marketing efforts helped G4 build out their initial user base, paid media was the critical component of the marketing mix that attracted new users to the G4 mobile brand. As a content providerthat earns revenue from advertising, the app’s success has allowed G4 to deliver even more value toadvertisers by expanding their offering across three screens (television, desktop web and mobile).
Understanding the return on investment of app promotion was also an important part of the Android launch. Tracking performance with app download tracking enabled G4 to evaluate what ads and Android devices showed the highest conversion rate and lowest cost-per-install. By refining device targeting and only running on the most effective ad creative, G4 was able to maximize return from their marketing budget. The campaign drove a conversion rate of 8.01% across all ads and devices, while top ads converted at 12.25% and top devices at 16.47%.
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We are excited to see continued success working with application developers in growing their user base across platforms. Congratulations to G4 on their success on mobile!
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Usage of m.youtube.com is exploding and mobile consumers watch hundreds of millions of video views on YouTube Mobile each month. To better understand these users and their browsing and video consuming behavior we recently ran a survey of users on m.youtube.com and received >16,000 responses. Some of the results may surprise you:
75% of respondents say that mobile is their primary way of accessing YouTube
70% visit YouTube Mobile at least once a day
58% spend more than 20 minutes per visit to YouTube Mobile
38% feel that YouTube Mobile is replacing their desktop YouTube usage
However, these results may not be as surprising when you learn that, according to Nielsen, YouTube Mobile is the #1 video viewing mobile website in the US, with more than 7.1MM monthly unique users. Advertisers can now own 100% share-of-voice on YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com) by purchasing a daily roadblock and owning all available ad impressions for 24 hours. Ads run on the Search, Browse and Home pages of the mobile website. Here’s an example of a recent Diet Coke campaign:
The roadblock runs across the Search, Browse and Home pages ofm.youtube.com
Advertisers from a range of verticals have successfully run roadblocks on YouTube Mobile including autos, CPG, entertainment, retail and others. Many advertisers choose to time their YouTube Mobile Roadblocks to coincide with product launches, sales events, or other days they are making a big media push. Purchasing a roadblock of YouTube Mobile is an excellent complement to campaigns you may be running on YouTube’s desktop as you can reach users as they interact with YouTube from their device of choice.
We’ve launched this opportunity in the US and we’re excited to roll it out in multiple international markets soon.
Posted by Johanna Werther, Advertiser Lead PMM, Google Mobile Display Marketing
