Category Archives: Mobile advertising

AdMob Not The First To Provide Download Tracking for iPhone Apps

AdMob announced yesterday that it will allow for the the first time iPhone applications developers to track clicks on ads that lead to a download of an application.

Let me tell you that this claim is wrong, AdMob is not the first to provide this kind of tracking.

I cannot tell you who was the first to allow advertisers to track downloads of applications coming from clicks on banners (or text links), but I know for fact that you could already do that with affiliate marketing solutions providers such as Linkshare or TradeDoubler, under the iTunes Affiliation Program.

With this program, you can link to any song, album, videos or iPhone/iPod Touch applications available in the iTunes Store. I’ve been setting up these programs and it works like a charm. With TradeDoubler, you can even run Google AdWords Mobile campaigns and know exactly what keywords lead to a click and then download of your iPhone app.

So, if you want to use affiliate links for your own applications, well, you can! You’ll get tracking:clicks on your ads will be reported in Linkshare/Tradedoubler reports, plus you’ll get a commission, for example with Linkshare the commission is 5%. So in Fact, when you sell an iPhone app, you’ll not get a 70% but a 75% revenue share…

I’m not saying that AdMob shouldn’t be used; but after reading their press release I felt like I needed to comment on the fact that it is not the first company to provide this feature.

It’s good to have other companies allowing you to do this, this way you won’t invest your money blindly on advertising, I can only recommend you to try them all, to see which one you feel the most confortable with as far as what tracking details are available, personally I’m happy with Linkshare and TradeDoubler.

Mobile Advertising for Beginners

Peggy Anne Salz, publisher of MSearchGroove has been writing a whitepaper about Mobile Advertising, which is now available for download.

This paper aims to help companies understand how to run mobile advertising campaigns, Peggy provides case studies of 3 campaigns she’s made: Google Mobile Adwords, Decktrade, and Mo’Jiva.

In this paper, you’ll learn how to launch a campaign, optimize it, and how to track your results. Peggy used two mobile analytics solutions: Bango Analytics and AdMob Analytics. She compares the two solutions and outlines the features of each.

The guide has been written for people new to mobile advertising but can also be interesting for people already running mobile ad campaigns.

To download the whitepaper, head over to Bango.

Microsoft Announces Display Advertising on Windows Live for Mobile Services plus Mobile Search Advertising

During advance08, Microsoft’s online advertising leadership forum held in Redmond, the company announced that display advertising (banner ads) was now available across two Windows Live for mobile services, and also “the launch of new markets for Windows Live for mobile services and upcoming advertising plans for its Live Search Mobile offering.”

Advertisers from France, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. can now buy banner ads that will be displayed acorss Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail.

“This builds upon Microsoft’s initial launch of mobile advertising for MSN Mobile in, France, , Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. where mobile ads are available alongside premium MSN Mobile content. Advertising on Windows Live for mobile is already available in Spain, and later this month will be available in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, further extending its availability for advertisers. All ads placed on these two popular services will adhere to Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) guidelines.”

Microsoft also announced that it plans to expand its mobile sponsored links offers on Live Search Mobile in the second half of 2008. A beta is currently available in the U.S.

The press release is available here.

AdMob Launches Free Mobile Analytics Solution

AdMob, one of the largest mobile advertising networks, has recently announced the launch of AdMob Analytics, a free mobile web analytics solution.

According to the press release, the main features will be:

“The AdMob Analytics suite allows mobile site owners 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”

” AdMob Mobile Analytics will also provide site owners visibility into their sources of traffic including search engines, direct traffic and advertising. Combined with the ability to track conversion of the specific events and actions that the campaign seeks to drive, this enables measurement of campaign performance”

I wonder what is AdMob’s definition of “unique visitor”. Unlike on the desktop Internet ecosystem, the mobile Internet doesn’t allow the use of cookies or Javascript on all mobile devices. To my knowledge, the only reliable way to identify unique visitors is by using it’s MSISDN, which is only retrievable by carriers or mobile billing companies such as Bango (which are linked to carriers).

AdMob Analytics is not open to the public yet, you need to request an invite for their beta version on the site.

I cannot say much about the service since I haven’t tested it yet and they aren’t many information on the site. But that’s good to see someone launching a free mobile analytics solution, this will help marketers and mobile site owners get useful information about their visitors, and tune their sites to improve user experiences.

The Associated Press To Launch a Free Mobile News Service

The Associated Press announced yesterday that it will develop an ad-supported mobile service to deliver stories and photos to advanced mobile phones, including the iPhone.

With this service called “Mobile News Network”, people will be able to read local news but also national and international news from AP network.

The service was designed specifically for the iPhone but can be used with other smartphones. Mobile News Network will be organized by ZIP code. I think AP should also think about adding Location Based Services with phones that are GPS-capable, the iPhone isn’t yet, but they’ve been some rumors predicting that Apple will add this functionality in the next generation of this device.

Local ads would be sold by newspapers and also national ads served by ad companies. Mobile advertising companies such as JumpTap, Medio, Google or Yahoo! will be very interested in serving ads on these networks, since the traffic will likely be tremendous.

Each party, news providers and ad sellers will get 50% of the revenue.

This will help struggling newspapers find other sources of revenues.

Via washingtonpost.com