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Posts Tagged ‘AdMob’

2 Mar 2010

It looks like while half the Web will be holding its breath over how Facebook will wield its newly-found patent power, with its patent of the news feed, the other half just found a reason to take a big gulp of air and look around. Google was awarded last Tuesday a patent for location-based advertising, the potential bread and butter of a number of emerging mobile applications.

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Kim-Mai Cutler at VentureBeat first discovered the patent, which it says “covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad.” Google filed for the patent in April 2004, several years before location based check-in services ever came into popular use.

Now, companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite have to be wondering what this means for them, as do some of the established big-time players, like Facebook and Apple.

Cutler points out this could be a cause for concern or it could just be a bargaining chip, like in a cold war, writing “it’s uncertain whether other start-ups should be alarmed by this. It’s standard for companies to file patents on technology they have developed as a defensive practice, rather than as a tool for pressuring other companies to desist or pay license fees.”

The patent, titled “Determining and/or using location information in an ad system“, gives a fully detailed description of what we would expect of any advertising network, from the basic idea of serving an advertisement according to a user’s location to analyzing resultant traffic and advertising success according to a number of factors.

Google further expanded its bussiness in the direction of mobile advertising last November, when it bought the mobile advertising service AdMob for $750 million. We weren’t all that puzzled by the move then, but now it makes even more sense.

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Tags: AdMob, facebook, google, mobile advertising, patents on technology, start ups, venturebeat, what this means, yelp

Consumer Demographics and Their Wireless Devices

In: web resources

26 Feb 2010

As smartphone usage becomes more and more mainstream, businesses have to consider how their audiences are interacting with them online. For that reason, it can help to gain insight into how users of different devices interact with those devices.

AdMob released its monthly Mobile Metrics report today, which finds that Android and iPhone users download a similar number of apps every month and spend a similar amount of time using the apps. However, while Only 21% of Android users purchase at least 1 paid app per month, 50% of iPhone users do, 35% of iPod touch users, and 24% of webOS users. In other words, if you want to reach Android users through an app, you may have better luck if that app is free.

According to the report, iPod touch users download an average of 12 apps a month, 37% more apps than iPhone and Android users. iPod touch users also spent 100 minutes a day using apps, 25% more time than iPhone and Android users.

73% of Android users are male, compared to 58% of webOS users, 57% of iPhone users and 54% iPod touch users. The iPhone, iPod touch and webOS have similar gender distributions, with just over half of the users on all devices being male.

Gender by Mobile Platform - iPhone vs Android vs iPod Touch vs webOS

In addition, iPod touch users skew considerably younger relative to other platforms and devices, according to AdMob. Based on the company’s survey, 78% of iPod touch users are below the age of 25, compared to 25% of iPhone users and 24% of Android and webOS users.

Age by Mobile Platform - iPhone vs Android vs iPod Touch vs webOS

The iPad will be out before long, and that means users will have access to apps that iPhone users and iPod Touch users do. 16% of iPhone users said they intend to purchase an iPad, compared to 11% of webOS users and only 6% of Android users. Of course, Google is working on its own new devices that would more directly compete with the iPad.

AdMob finds that 91% of iPhone users and 88% of iPod touch users would recommend their device, compared to 84% of Android users and 69% of webOS users. webOS users are 3.4x more likely to not recommend their device relative to iPhone OS users.

Which platform do you use? Would you recommend it? Tell us.

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Tags: AdMob, better luck, gender distributions, google, ipad, iPhone, ipod touch, metrics, webos

A Look At 4INFO, The King Of SMS

In: web resources

10 Feb 2010

When Google bought mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in November 2009, 4IFNO CEO Zaw Thet said that he received a couple of phone calls from investment bankers and potential buyers who where were sniffing around the space. When Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million two months later, he says his phone started to ring off the hook.

Why? Because 4INFO is usually described as the AdMob of SMS advertising. That isn’t a very good description of the company, but it’s enough to make everyone think that the company is next in line to close a big acquisition. And that last part just may be true.

The company, which has raised around $40 million in venture capital, is where companies go when they want to create a “mailing list” of SMS subscribers. For example – when Zynga began testing SMS notifications in December, they turned to 4INFO to power the product. 4INFO has 250 premier publishers, plus a couple of thousand more that use its self service platform.

4INFO offers customers a publishing platform, which is tools to manage SMS subscribers and send them content. They also run an ad network for SMS ads, and a SMS gateway to handle the carrier relationships and charges. 4INFO’s larger publishers pay as much as $15,000 per month to use the platform. Those publishers can run their own ads, or use 4INFO’s ads with a revenue split (self service customers have no choice but to accept 4INFO’s ads).

4INFO has 50 million U.S. phone numbers stored on behalf of publishers. And they are beginning to roll out an international product as well.

I sat met with Thet last week to see the company’s San Mateo offices and talk about the 4INFO business. He answered all of my questions, and even said the right thing at the end when I asked who’d be acquiring him. “We’re building an independent company,” he said. Which is exactly what everyone says right before they get bought.

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4INFO

Zaw Thet

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