Mobile browser company Opera today announced that it has acquired the mobile ad networks Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising. The move is not just another sign of the ongoing consolidation in that space, but also of the need to bulk up to better compete with the likes of Google with more full-service solutions.
Opera will be paying $18 million for Mobile Theory and $8 million for 4th Screen, with potential earn-outs bringing in an additional $32 million and $6.5 million respectively in 2013 and 2014 → Read More
Tablet use has skyrocketed over the past year, so it makes sense that advertisers are flocking to these devices and platforms to reach consumers. Google tells us that in November 2011, AdMob saw 8 billion ad requests coming from tablets, an increase from 1 billion in December of 2010, and a 700 percent increase in the past year.
To put that number in perspective, AdMob sees nearly 3 billion ad requests a day globally. In May, Google introduced new formats for tablet ads, allowing advertisers and publishers to serve full-screen interstitial ads built with HTML5 on smartphones and tablets. → Read More
When Google bought mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in 2009, the company was clearly trying to capitalize on the growing mobile advertising market. Mobile advertising, both on apps and the mobile web, is a natural extension of Google’s display and search ad business. Of course, as the integration has taken place over the last year, certain AdMob features have been axed because they didn’t fit with the overall strategy or for redundancy. For example, Google ended AdMob’s cross-promotion download exchange a few months ago. And now Google is announcing that it will soon end AdMob’s mobile web serving capabilities.
As Google aptly titled its blog post announcing the change; AdMob is for mobile app developers. AdSense is for mobile web publishers. Even after over a year of integration, Google is still sorting out the overlap and has determined that mobile web publishers should head to AdSense to monetize their sites, and mobile app publishers should use AdMob. → Read More
It looks like Google is sunsetting a cross-promotion feature that mobile ad network AdMob previously offered. The AdMob Download Exchange allowed mobile app developers who had an application with available ad space to serve ads that promote other applications in the AdMob exchange. In return, their apps were promoted on other apps in the network.
Apparently, Google sent all developers who are participants in the exchange an email informing them that the AdMob Download Exchange is being ‘sunset’ and ‘will no longer operate after June 8, 2011.’ From Google’s email: This will allow us to focus our efforts on further developing our suite of publisher tools. → Read More
It’s been exactly one year since mobile ad network AdMob was officially acquired by Google for $750 million, after intense scrutiny of the deal by the FTC. Over the past year, Google has been working to integrate AdMob into the company, and clearly there have been some highs and lows. Today, As AdMob-Google turns one the search giant is announcing a number of new features and milestones for the ad network.
Overall, AdMob traffic (Ad Requests) have grown more than 3.5 times in the last year. In April, AdMob saw over 2.7 billion ad requests a day globally, up from over 2 billion announced in January. There are over 80,000 mobile websites and apps in the AdMob network, up from over 50,000 in January. And 11 countries in the AdMob network generated more than a billion monthly ad requests in April 2011, up from just three countries a year ago. → Read More
The great thing about building successful software applications is that you don’t really need a proper education, but rather a good understanding of markets and obviously knowledge of how to program.
Meet Julian Zehetmayer, who in 2010 as a 17-year old high school drop out quietly launched MobFox, a mobile advertising network, much like Admob, but with a simple and clear USP: Higher CPCs/CPMs for developers working with MobFox as their mobile advertising solution of choice. The startup, which is currently self funded and according to the founder “only interested if the deal is interesting enough”, is already being used in around 1,500 applications worldwide, with several renowned apps such as Friendly for Facebook or IM+ making money through MobFox’s ad engine. → Read More
Google-owned mobile ad network AdMob is announcing a number of new products and features today for developers and advertisers. This includes the launch of the beta SDK for Windows Phone 7, which will allows these platform developers to advertise via AdMob.
Google director of engineering Mark Schaaf (who is a former AdMob Engineering Director and the network’s third employee) says that the addition of Windows Phone 7 SDK aligns with Google’s openness strategy, which in AdMob’s case, allows developers and advertisers to users across multiple mobile platforms. He says that the AdMob network currently includes more than 50,000 mobile applications across iOS, Android, and webOS platforms. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Jason Spero, the head of mobile ads for the Americas at Google. Spero joined Google in May 2010 as part of the acquisition of AdMob where he was vice president and general manager of North America responsible for strategy and operations.
Mobile is finally delivering on its promise. All the technology is in place and consumers are engaging in droves, on smartphones in particular. However, many businesses still aren’t hearing the call. Most have not yet meaningfully engaged with mobile consumers and adapted their strategies to capitalize on the mobile opportunity. But, it’s still not too late to be early to mobile. Here are five simple steps that businesses should take —today—to build the foundation of their mobile marketing and commerce strategy. → Read More
Google’s mobile ad network AdMob is releasing a number of staggering statistics today as the network begins its first full year under the Google umbrella. Google says that AdMob is receiving 2 billion ad requests per day, a data point which has quadrupled over the past year. To put that in perspective, as of May of 2010, AdMob was receiving nearly 1 billion ad requests per month.
To give you a picture of the current pace of mobile advertising, Google receives more ad requests in a single day than AdMob received for the entire month of December 2007 (a growth rate of 30 times in just over three years). → Read More
There have been reports floating around that mobile ad network AdMob was having a rough transition at parent company Google. The best evidence of this is that CEO and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui left Google only five months after the mobile ad network was officially acquired by the search giant. And a number of other execs and employees have followed Hamoui’s lead to join startups. Today, another AdMob vet and former Google exec, Tony Nethercutt, is leaving the search giant to join mobile ad firm Mojiva, as General Manager, North America.
Nethercutt, the former VP of Sales for AdMob and the first ad exec hired by the startup back in its early days, joined Google as a Team Manager for Mobile Display Advertising following the acquisition. Prior to working for AdMob, Nethercutt helped grow a team of sales, account management, and sales operations staff at YouTube (Prior to its acquisition by YouTube). He also worked in sales and management roles at Yahoo and DoubleClick. → Read More
One of the most successful mobile games right now is Angry Birds, which has been downloaded more than 30 million times across different mobile platforms, with 12 million of those being paid downloads on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. But on Android, the game is free, and is supported by advertising. Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 5 million times on Android since that version launched in October. “By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds,” says Peter Vesterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” behind the game at Rovio Mobile. (Video after the jump). → Read More
When Google bought AdMob last year for $750 million, many were impressed as the search giant was able to outbid Apple in the fight for the mobile ad network. AdMob seemed like the perfect compliment to Google’s ad platform. But the past year has been tumultuous for the acquisition. The FTC investigated the deal for anti-competitiveness in the market, and Apple shot back with its own acquisition and ad platform iAds. While the FTC eventually signed off on the AdMob deal, the company recently suffered the abrupt loss of its leader and CEO, Omar Hamoui, and a number of other high-level execs at AdMob. And just this week, Business Insider published a report that the integration between AdMob and Google’s own ad offering wasn’t going that well. But today, Google is debuting its first integration with the mobile ad network, allowing developers to integrate Google AdSense ads within AdMob.
Google says that iPhone and Android applications developers in the AdMob network will now be able to integrate Google AdSense ads within their app when an AdMob ad is not available. Not only will this additional ad inventory allow publishers to always fill their ad spaces, but Google AdSense advertisers now have access to advertise on “thousands” of mobile apps in AdMob’s network, such as Rovio’s ‘Angry Birds’. AdSense Inventory includes local ads and click-to-call ads, says Google’s Jason Spero. → Read More
Last November, Google announced that it had acquired leading mobile ad network AdMob for a whopping $750 million. Today, less than a year after the deal closed, AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui is leaving Google, we’ve confirmed with the company. Google says Hamoui is leaving for personal reasons.
It sounds like Google is getting the short end of the stick here — Hamoui has actually only been able to work at the search giant for five months, because the AdMob/Google acquisition was held up by an endless federal investigation that stretched on from November 2009 through the end of May 2010 — an eternity in this highly competitive space. → Read More
Google’s recently purchased mobile ad network AdMob is announcing today that it is bringing interactive video ads to Android phones. AdMob already offers the video ad format for iPhones.
Similar to the iPhone formats, the new SDK for Android devices includes interactive video and interactive interstitial ad units. The ad network will dynamically identify screen resolution, size, and network connection speed to serve users the best ad for each device. And Android developers have more interactive options when including ads in their applications. The new ad units themselves can be placed when an app opens or within an app. → Read More
While there are many players in the mobile advertising market, there’s no doubt that there’s a little bit of a rivalry between Google’s ad network AdMob and Apple’s new foray into mobile ads, iAd. Some say iAd is taking some of AdMob’s share in the mobile ad market thanks to better performance. One of the cornerstones to iAd’s claimed success is that the format was developed by the company that actually makes both the device and OS and provides a more engaging experience. The same theory is probably what has made RIM enter the mobile ad wars, recently launching a mobile ad platform for BlackBerry phones. But AdMob contends that its platform is still appealing to advertisers because it allows brands to reach consumers across many different mobile platforms with similar engaging ad formats, whereas programs like iAd restrict advertisers to one device. Oh, and there’s the minimum $1 million ad buy Apple reportedly requires to serve ads through its network.
Of course, it’s not surprising that AdMob is pushing its multi-platform network as its competitive advantage; the openness of Google’s network is its badge of honor. But some well-known advertisers are actually choosing AdMob because of its multi-platform support for many devices, especially with the ability to target both iPhone and Android users (which is a steadily growing population). → Read More
In a Tweet just sent from Google Mobile Ads account, the company said that its mobile ad network, AdMob, has hit a new milestone today. AdMob has served a whopping 300 billion mobile ads since 2007. The network added another 100 billion ads since May, when it posted its 200 billionth ad milestone.
To give you a perspective of how fast the AdMob is growing in terms of ads served; it took nine months to get to 200 billion ads from 100 billion in August of 2009, and only 5 months to get to 300 billion. Clearly, growth is accelerating for the network. → Read More
Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, James Lamberti, VP of Global Research and Marketing for InMobi, sat down with our Michael Arrington to tell us a bit about mobile advertising.
InMobi is the largest independent mobile ad network in the world. Overall, they’re number two behind Google’s AdMob. That earned them an $8 million investment from Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures a couple weeks ago. But what’s particularly interesting about InMobi is how well they’re doing outside the U.S. → Read More
Mobile advertising is currently a billion dollar market and we’ve witnessed tech giants like Google and Apple move into the space with the acquisitions of mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless, respectively. AdMob is now part of Google’s mobile advertising business and Apple is using Quattro to power its new ad format, iAds. But there is another player that has silently been growing its business under the radar to become a dominant network in mobile advertising: Millennial Media. Currently, Millenial has the largest U.S. reach out of all the networks in terms of audience size according to Nielsen; with ads reaching 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web.
Despite being one of the “big three” in the still-small mobile ad space, Millennial is relatively unknown, while its competitors have seen prominent coverage in the media. Besides its monthly reports on mobile ad traffic, Millennial has avoided some of the drama that has been taking place in the industry. I caught up with the company’s CEO and co-founder Paul Palmieri to talk about how Millennial catapulted from a bootstrapped Baltimore-based startup to the largest independent mobile advertising company. → Read More
Mobile ad network AdMob (now part of Google) released its final Mobile Metrics report today (embedded below), at least for a while. AdMob gathers data from millions of phones and mobile devices which serve up its ad impressions, including almost 44 million iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads). The decision to stop disclosing the data may have something to do with its new owner, Google, wanting to assess what it wants to let out there, but it could also be tied to the fact that AdMob might no longer have access to any iPhone data since Apple is specifically threatening to block it.
Whatever the reason, AdMob’s reports have proven to be a rich source of data on the mobile Web across platforms since mobile ad impressions on the mobile Web and in mobile apps are a decent proxy for mobile Web/app usage overall. So let’s dig in.
Over the past two years, mobile ad impressions from smartphones have grown from 22 percent of the total to 46 percent in May, 2010. Apple iOS devices account for the largest portion worldwide, with 40 percent share. But as you can see in the chart above, that share has been declining since it peaked above 50 percent in November, 2009. Over that time, Android has been steadily taking share, rising to 26 percent. → Read More
Thanks to an SEC filing, another detail emerged today about Google’s acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob. We already knew the $750 million Google-AdMob acquisition was a cash and stock deal but we didn’t know the breakdown between the two. According to an SEC filing submitted by Google today, the search giant sold $530 million worth of stock as part of the deal, indicating that AdMob (and its investors) may have taken home the remainder, $220 million, in cash (because of some accounting issues, this number may not be exact).
So was AdMob happy with the split between cash and stock? I guess that depends on whether they think Google’s stock will keep going up. Google paid for the bulk of the deal with stock, and the deal will hardly make a dent in its huge cash reserves (the company has $26.5 billion in the bank). → Read More
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