AdMob and Coca Cola Launch Campaign

The AdMob team at Google recently worked with the Coca-Cola Company to produce a live 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.

AdMob and Coca Cola bring the holidays to your mobile phone - Google Mobile Ads Blog

AdMob Chief Talks about Mobile Advertising

Google's AdMob division head talks about mobile advertising.

Apple Appears to Permit Google Ads Inside iPad and iPhone Apps

Apple Inc. doesn't appear to have barred Google Inc. and others from selling targeted ads inside iPhone and iPad applications, after implying several weeks ago that it might do so, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Software developers say their new and updated applications are getting approved by Apple, even though the apps are enabled to serve ads by third-party ad networks such as Google's Mobile Adsense and AdMob.

Every smaller firm that finds it has become a dominant firm, or is perceived as potentially dominant, will incure antitrust and other regulatory scrutiny. It might be that Apple and Google both must move more cautiously now that each is seen as reaching the threshold of dominance in existing markets that might be leveraged to attain dominance in new markets.

If the pattern continues, it will be good for advertisers, content owners and software developers, as they will have more freedom to pick their partners and keep more business leverage.

AdMob May 2010 Metrics

AdMob Mobile Metrics - May 2010 - Highlights

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Apple Faces Another Antitrust Probe

U.S. antitrust regulators--it is not clear whether it is the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice, are reported by the Financial Times to be weighing another investigation of Apple for restraint of trade, this time because of its plans to block rivals from access to its mobile app advertising network.

The ironic point is that regulators continue to bustle about, trying to regulate an access industry fighting simply to replace revenues it is losing, while the arguably-more-important gatekeeper decisions are being made by device and application providers, whose businesses everyone conversely expect will power the businesses of tomorrow.

The latest concern comes less than a month after concluded an  investigation of Google's purchase of AdMob. So powerful is Apple seen to be that the mere presence of Apple in the market with its own iAd network and a suite of "must have" devices was seen by regulators to be enough of a counterweight to Google that there was no risk of anti-competitive behavior.

According to the Financial Times, it is not yet clear whether it will be left to the Federal Trade Commission, which carried out the recent Google investigation, or the Department of Justice to take an investigation forward.

Apple’s latest rules about analytics for bar access to such information by competing ad platforms, third-party analytics firms or companies that compete with Apple in hardware.

Google is saying, and most observers agree, that the rules effectively bar Apple apps from using Google's ad network.

So consider the possible other implications. Perhaps in retaliation for its exclusion from the Apple application ecosystem, Google makes YouTube inaccessible from iPhones, iPads or iPod Touch devices. Or search, or other apps. You get the point: serious gatekeeping happens all over the Internet and broadband ecosystems these days.

Apple Will Bar Google (AdMob) From iPhones, iPads, iTouch Devices

Says AdMob CEO: Apple proposed new developer terms on Monday that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google’s advertising solutions on the iPhone.  These advertising related terms both target companies with competitive mobile technologies (such as Google), as well as any company whose primary business is not serving mobile ads. This change threatens to decrease – or even eliminate – revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money.  And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.

Let’s be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.

Since I started AdMob in 2006, I have watched competition in mobile advertising help drive incredible growth and innovation in the overall ecosystem.  We’ve worked to help developers make money, regardless of platform – iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows, and others. In the past four years, AdMob has helped tens of thousands of developers make money and build real businesses across multiple operating systems.

I’ve personally worked with many iPhone app developers around the world, including one who created a fun and simple game in the early days of the App Store. He built the app because he was interested in the challenge. He built this single app into a multi-million dollar advertising revenue stream with AdMob, hired a whole team, and turned a hobby into a real business.

We see these stories all the time.  We want to help make more of them, so we’ll be speaking to Apple to express our concerns about the impact of these terms.

Google and Apple Likely to Dominate Mobile Advertising

Apple’s ownership of mobile advertising firm iAd gives it advantages over any other advertiser wishing to place ads on iPhone OS devices such as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple, for instance, can harvest data about how such ads interact with items for sale in the iTunes store that other ad networks cannot access.

Google will be able to do the same on Android OS devices, but the stability of its legacy business has to be questioned, given that much AdMob traffic is generated by iPhones and other Apple devices. Over time, much of that traffic, perhaps all of it, will migrate to iAd, Apple's network.

AdMob’s success to date on the iPhone platform is unlikely to be an accurate predictor of AdMob’s competitive significance going forward, the Federal Trade Commission has concluded. Still, AdMob does essentially triple the number of mobile ad formats Google can sponsor. In addition to search ads, Google now will expand into display and "in application" advertising.

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Will iAd Lead to Rapid Rearrangement of Mobile Ad Network Rankings?

Google, at the moment, runs the biggest U.S. mobile advertising network while Apple currently ranks about seventh.

Apple certainly does not expect to remain seventh, and most observers likely believe Apple will ultimately rise up to the top ranks.

That might happen faster if AdMob clients shift over to the iAd network, since the iPhone now accounts for the majority of AdMob revenues.

It wouldn't be unusual if Apple and Google found themselves in the top-two spots before long.

What Apple Has to Do to Dominate Mobile Advertising

What will Apple do to upend Google's dominance in search advertising, as advertising emerges as a major revenue stream in the mobility business? For starters, it will leverage its strength in devices and strong consumer market share. That will be the least of Apple's concerns.

Apple will leverage iTunes as the distribution portal and media manager, something it also will not have a problem with.

Apple will try to leverage the "closed" or "integrated" way it approaches device operation and design, which sacrifices "openness" for assured application operation. And it will block third party applications and ad networks from access to advertising analytics that are the heart of all efforts to personalize advertising for mobile apps.

But there are challenges. Apple has to hope that the Android ecosystem will not flourish. A functional definition might be that Apple gets as much as 50 percent market share for smartphones, while Android fails to approach those levels. It is too early to predict whether this could happen.

There is a bit of execution risk as Apple tries to stake out a "premium" position for its own ad network, compared to others.

Of course, all of this assumes mobile marketing gets critical mass, but most observers think that is only a matter of time.

It would take a brave prognosticator indeed to argue that Apple does not have an excellent shot at upending Google in the emerging mobile marketing business. But there currently is only a small group of large firms in the mobile advertising space, though there are lots of emerging firms trying to muscle their way into the emerging business.

"There's AdMob (Google), Apple and us," says Paran Johar, Jumptap CMO. "That's pretty much it." The Federal Trade Commission might be preparing a challenge to Google's purchase of AdMob. Some of us might be so sure that is necessary. Apple is the company to watch, it might appear.

App Stores Very Valuable for Handset Suppliers and Users; Maybe Not Developers

App stores have been a huge boost to smartphone perceived value. What they haven't yet proven is that they are an effective way for software developers to sell applications.

About 80 percent to 90 percent of app downloads are of the "free" rather than "paid" variety, according to AdMob.

Android Becoming a Factor in U.S. Mobile Ad Market

Android smartphones are becoming a bigger factor in the U.S. mobile advertising market, with ad requests growing 97 percent in just two months between October 2009 and December 2009, according to AdMob.

Of those one billion ad requests tracked by AdMob, 90 percent were from U.S.-based devices.AdMob tracks handset and operator data from every ad request in its advertising network of more than 15,000 mobile web sites and applications.

Much of the growth was driven by the release of the Motorola Droid. Before the Droid’s launch, HTC devices accounted for 98 percent of Android requests. In December, that fell to 56 percent, with 39 percent from Motorola (which also offers the CLIQ) and five percent from Samsung.

The Motorola Droid already is the leading Android handset in the AdMob network and generated 30 percent of requests in December.