Recently acquired mobile ad exchange Mobclix is releasing its 2010 report, which takes a look at the top trend in the mobile advertising space. 2010 has been a big year for mobile advertising companies and startups, with the Google-AdMob deal approved, Apple’s Quattro buy and iAds launch, Millennial’s fast growth and more. Unsurprisingly, the trend that tops Mobclix’s report is the platform war between Apple and Google over the iPhone versus Android. Mobclix says that impressions on Android phones via Mobclix’s platform grew by 420 percent over the past year whereas iPhone impressions grew by 347 percent for the same 12 month period.
Another interesting trend highlighted by the report is that real-time bidding for mobile ad space is becoming more widely adopted by publishers and developers as the optimal way to fill space. Mobclix says that real time bidding inventory is expected to make up 10% – 15% of total ad buys for 2011. In fact, 50% of all targeted online ad display platforms will be powered through real time platforms by 2015. → Read More
This is kind of a cool technology Nikon is patenting here. I personally like to do the manual zoom thing when shooting DSLR video, but the slow creeping zoom or quick min-max possible with an electronic zoom rocker are both also valuable tools. As far as I know, there aren’t any consumer cameras that implement both, though I could be wrong about that. At any rate, Nikon is looking into it. → Read More
The Crunchie Awards, which are co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat, are pretty much my favorite part about TechCrunch. That being said, today is everyone’s last day to nominate your favorite companies, products and people (yourself included) for one of the 20 different awards categories.
Act fast, because at 11:59PM PST on Christmas Eve (tonight) our developer Vineet Thandar is going to flip the switch from his makeshift office in Lake Tahoe and you’ll miss your chance to have a say in who deserves to be celebrated for the best tech accomplishments of 2010. → Read More
With Theopeninter.net, web designer Michael Ciarlo has given you the holiday gift of being able to explain to the less web savvy members of your friends and family what net neutrality means (basically) and why exactly laymen should care about the FCC’s recent attempts to create “enforcable” Internet regulations.
And while granted there’s a lot more complexity surrounding the issue than “All ISPs are inherently evil and want to charge you for Skype.” Theopeninter.net does, as Reddit commenter lolinyerface (yeah I know) put it, “The job of showing how things we get for free now, could one day be per item additional cost.” → Read More
It was exactly one year ago today that Foodspotting sent out the first test build of their app to a few iPhone users. Today they’re finally doing the same for Android — and they’re opening the beta up to everyone.
Yes, the application which allows you to take pictures of your favorite foods and share them with a community of foodies is finally moving beyond the iPhone. When we first wrote about the app last March, people were already asking for an Android version in the comments. But the small team had their hands full developing the iPhone version and working on their website. But this past August, when announcing their new round of seed funding, Foodspotting revealed that work had begun on the Android version. And now here it is. → Read More
Tis the night – or day, if you’re in the US – before Christmas – at least for those who live in the majority-Christian bits of the world – and all through the house – or in my case, hotel – not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. The mouse, after all, is dead.
There are plety of things I love about spending Christmas in the UK – snow,repeats of old TV shows I haven’t seen since this time last year, Christmas crackers – but more than all of that, I love the fact that Christmas is one of the last parts of the year that remains mostly analogue. → Read More
Shopping? Fighting? Dancing? Hugging? Working? Tell us! Remember, you can still win all sorts of crazy stuff today. We’re closing all of our contests tonight. → Read More
Several years ago, before Gilt, One King’s Lane and Zulily, I argued that some of the most valuable, disruptive tech startups would be in commerce, not advertising, cutting out the middle man rather than adding another one. It’s fair to say that 2010′s fastest-growing technology companies have largely been examples of this trend.
Now there’s a second trend emerging in 2011 that seems at least as important: the hybrid business, with one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. This isn’t the old “clicks-and-mortar” concept from the 1990s, which put web glitter on an old-school business, building Walmart.com for Walmart. A hybrid business is built entirely from scratch, to be innovative in its online technology and its real-world operations. → Read More
Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has acquired WebVisor, a Russian startup, after holding an “open day for startups” to pitch the search company. WebVisor provides visitor behavior analysis (mouse movement, clicks, text copying etc.) and will be integrated with the company’s own visitor statistics tool, Yandex.Metrica. Terms were not disclosed.
Yandex says the WebVisor team has joined the company to work on merging their technology into its own framework. WebVisor will keep servicing existing clients, but the service will not accept new customers going forward. → Read More
We’ve seen this one coming all year. Facebook is now the third largest website in the world, taking the No. 3 spot from Yahoo, according to comScore. Facebook drew an estimated 648 million unique visitors from across the globe in November, 2010, compared to 630 million for Yahoo. In October the two sites were dead even with 633 million worldwide unique visitors each (actually Facebook had already passed Yahoo by a smidgeon in October with about half a million more visitors). The only two Web properties left which are bigger than Facebook are Microsoft (869 million worldwide visitors) and Google (970 million) when you look at all of their sites collectively.
The evidence leading up to this overthrow has been building up for a long time. Facebook became the fourth largest Website in the world nearly 18 months ago, and quickly passed Yahoo in pageviews. Today, Facebook accounts for nearly a quarter of all display ads in the U.S., which is more than twice as much as Yahoo. → Read More
We have a Christmas surprise for all of you.
As you have seen us do in the past, we feel it’s only fair to give away some of the new, fancy, amazing items we so often write about, and this time we are giving away a Google Nexus S to one lucky reader.
You can read our full review on it here or watch Erick Schonfeld and John Biggs review it on Fly or Die (also embedded below). It is really simple to set up, includes all of Google’s various apps (like 3D Maps and Google Voice), and is incredibly fast.
Simply put, this is the best Android phone on the market right now. You want it? To enter is simple. Just fan the TechCrunch Facebook page and then do one of these two things: retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag), or leave a comment below telling us why you think this phone needs to be yours. → Read More
Reading and books: probably the most fantastic gifts possible. That said, the Nook Color can do books, magazines, simple games, and browse the web all on an Android system. It’s been called an iPad light and that’s a great description, really. Normally these run $249.99 in Barnes & Nobel stores, but as the last item in our 12 Days of Christmas giveaway extravaganza, it’s going to one of our lucky reader for nothing more than the cost of a comment. Of course B&N stores are still open today and the Nook Color along with its e-ink counterparts are likely still available if last minute shopping is on your to-do list. They are great devices. Also, consider this last call for our big ticket giveaway: one stunning gaming system from Digital Storm worth nearly $2,300. Both the computer and Nook Color giveaway end tonight at 11:59pm PST. Click through for the instructions and rules. → Read More
Toshiba seems to be determined to completely overhaul its semiconductor segment. Yesterday, it was reported that Sony will buy back a semiconductor plant it sold to Toshiba two years ago for $600 million. And today, Toshiba itself said it is ready for a second step: the company is in talks with Samsung to farm out the production of LSI chips to its Korean rival. → Read More
Reading and books: probably the most fantastic gifts possible. That said, the Nook Color can do books, magazines, simple games, and browse the web all on an Android system. It’s been called an iPad light and that’s a great description, really. Normally these run $249.99 in Barnes & Nobel stores, but as the last item in our 12 Days of Christmas giveaway extravaganza, it’s going to one of our lucky reader for nothing more than the cost of a comment. Of course B&N stores are still open today and the Nook Color along with its e-ink counterparts are likely still available if last minute shopping is on your to-do list. They are great devices.
Also, consider this last call for our big ticket giveaway: one stunning gaming system from Digital Storm worth nearly $2,300. Both the computer and Nook Color giveaway end tonight at 11:59pm PST. Click through for the instructions and rules. → Read More
E-commerce giant eBay sees a massive amount of searches every day—the company just announced that it handled more than 2 billion U.S. product searches in the third quarter alone. For the same time period, comScore reports that Amazon saw 847 million searches, while Google handled only 226 million product searches. Similar to the fact that top Google searches can show what’s trending during a specific time, eBay’s searches can show us what is popular in terms of e-commerce at a given time.
The company has releases data on the top product searches on the marketplace during the holiday shopping season (Dec. 1 through Dec. 22). During the time period, the top three products that saw the largest spike in searches (in order) are the Nintendo Wii Console, Xbox Kinect, and “Ugly Christmas Sweater.” → Read More
Keeping Christmas Green With A Couple Eco-Friendly Wrapping Tips iFixit’s iPad App: A Nice Last-Minute Gift For The Tinkerer In The Family Review: Marshall Major Headphones Review: Roland R-05 DIY: “Soft-touch” Your Cell Phone, Game Controller, Or Adult Toy → Read More
After selling his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million a year ago, co-founder Daniel Mattes has set his sights on the electronic payments market.
Mattes, who has apparently been baptized the “Bill Gates of the Alps”, has started a new company called Jumio. → Read More
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