AdMob Stats

AdMob just released its July stats. As always, it is very interesting to have a look at. Simply because with more than 100 billion ads served since launch and roughly 10bn in July 09 alone, they are representative of trends happening in the industry, particularly in the mobile advertising space. You can download their reports here at http://metrics.admob.com/

In addition, AdMob has always been clear about the representativness of the data: “AdMob does not claim that this information will be necessarily representative of the mobile Web as a whole or of any particular countrymarket. AdMob’s traffic is driven by publisher relationships and may be influenced accordingly. Because the data is pulled across ads served on more than 7,000 sites, we feel the data will be useful and may help inform business decision making”.

This month’s takeaway will raise many questions and comments in the industry:

* Android, iPhone and iPod touch users are all highly engaged with apps. Android and iPhone users
download 9-10 new apps per month, while iPod touch users download 18. Over half of Android and
iPhone users spend more than 30 minutes per day using apps.

* iPhone and iPod touch users are more likely to regularly purchase paid apps than Android users. 19%
of Android users download at least 1 paid app per month, compared to 50% of iPhone users and 40% of
iPod touch users.

* However, of those users who regularly purchase paid apps, downloading behavior is similar across
platforms. These users spend an average of $9 on about 5 paid apps per month.

AdMob is quite clear about the Methodology too:
All data in the feature section is based on survey results taken by users on their mobile device.
Respondents were sourced by responding to mobile ads throughout AdMob’s iPhone and Android networks.
There was no incentive offered to participate in the survey.
There were 1,117 total respondents: 390 Android, 380 iPhone and 347 iPod touch. The survey was run from
August 14th – August 21st.
The geographic representation of the respondents was designed to approximate the distribution of
Android and iPhone users in the AdMob network.

I have some concerns about the way these stats are extrapolated all over the worldwide blogosphere as:

- mid August is a very specific timing to ask consumers
- cautious extrapolation is required as the analysis has been conducted only during one week
- consumers who click on ads have probably a different behavior than others
- data is likely to be US centric given the distribution of ad requests within the AdMob network

My takeway would be:

- thanks to AdMob as the data always give food for thought
- be cautious when extrapolating and read the methodology carefully
- we don’t care about downloads, what your brand should care is real usage: how many of your customers use your app on a daily / weekly basis once they have downloaded it?
- Does AdMob really want to position itself as (exclusively) an iPhone ad network?: competitors in the off-portal space such as BuzzCity have a very different approach

Geo-located mobile tweets

Twitter + geo-localization + augmented reality + Mobile= buzz of the day.

That being said, beyond the buzz, it shows the potential of the platform

Once again, this news was brought to me via a fastcompany’s article.

By the way you can follow me on Twitter at Thomas_Husson

Polo’s QR Codes suck!

I came accross this example of poor mobile barcode user-experience via Jacques-André Fines Schlumberger, who I met recently. In fact, the example is not new at all as the mobile marketing campaign was launched last year but that’s the kind of viral stuff you still discover across the Atlantic a few months after the first viewers.

There are still lots of pending issues around barcodes standardization. If you’re interested in that topic, I advise you to read his blog

Nokia Rocks the World

That’s the title of a very interesting article by Mark Roden. Worth having a read as it summarizes Nokia’s challenges and ambitions.

“This is an early advertisement from Nokia. It says: A tire you can trust … from Nokia,” he says. “Nokia is a great company from Finland that I joined in 1990. In its history, it has made great car tires and also great rubber boots.”
This quote is attributed to EVP Tero Ojanperä at a recent dinner in NYC. Having had the opportunity to be in Espoo several times, even in Turku (before the site was closed down) and to meet lots of Nokia folks over the last few years, I think such a quote is very symbolic of Nokia’s culture.
The company is always trying to reinvent itself and one of its key challenge today is to become a solutions company or an Internet player, to shift from hardware to software. They have been significant organizational changes in the last few years and even if the transformation does not seem to pay off yet, bear in mind Nokia makes 13 phones every second while it was not known as a handset maker not that long ago.

This could be the subject of a very nice thesis on companies’ culture.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to join Nokia World in Stuttgart at the end of the month but I am curious to know if any significant announcement will be made.