June 15th, 2012

Apple’s iAd Diaspora: Former Senior Mgr Mike Owen Now CRO At AdColony

AdColony logo

Another former executive from Apple’s iAd business has made a move to another mobile ad venture: Mike Owen, who had been a senior manager overseeing iAd’s New York office, is joining mobile video ad network AdColony as its chief revenue officer. The news comes amid two other executive appointments for AdColony  – Ty Heath as CTO, and Abe Pralle as VP of technology, both joining from gaming… → Read More

June 12th, 2012

Flurry’s New Ad Analytics Service Will Reveal The Effectiveness Of Mobile Ad Networks

flurry_logo

Mobile app measurement and advertising platform Flurry is expanding its product lineup with a new service that will allow app marketers the ability to track the effectiveness of their mobile ad campaigns. Flurry Ad Analytics, as the service is being called, works with the major ad networks, such as Apple’s iAd, Google Admob, and Flurry’s own AppCircle, for example, and will show from where users… → Read More

May 24th, 2012

Big Apple Leads Millennial Q1 Device Ranks By Wide Margin: 28% For Brand, 15% For iPhone

iphone-4

Mobile advertising company  Millennial  Media, one of the biggest in the U.S., has released its quarterly ad impression report, and the results show that Apple continues to remain the single-biggest brand, and most popular phone maker, on the Millennial ad network — with the rest of the list largely dominated by Android.

Apple has a clear lead in the field of device makers based on brand… → Read More

May 14th, 2012

In First Report As A Public Company: Millennial Media’s Net Loss Widens To $4M, Revenues Up 53%

Screen Shot 2012-05-14 at 2.15.40 PM

In its first-ever earnings report as a publicly traded company, mobile advertising network Millennial Media said its net loss for the first quarter widened to $4 million on increased costs. Revenues were up 53 percent year-over-year to $32.9 million.

Millennial’s shares fell by 7.7 percent in after-hours trading, as the company’s annual forecast missed estimates.  For the year, Millennial is… → Read More

May 8th, 2012

JumpTap: Kindle Fire Usage Has Declined After Holiday Boost, iPad Back To Pre-Fire Launch Levels

Kindle Fire -1

The Kindle Fire from Amazon has stolen a march in the tablet world, with some estimating that it now makes up more than half of all Android tablets in use in the U.S. today. But the latest monthly figures from mobile ad network JumpTap today paint a different picture in terms of usage.

JumpTap noted that in the months after its launch, Amazon’s device rapidly picked up market share, reaching 33… → Read More

May 8th, 2012

Singtel’s Amobee Buys AdJitsu To Take Mobile Ads Into The Third Dimension

adjitsu 3D ad

Another bit of consolidation in the mobile advertising space — this time with an ad-tech twist: Amobee, the mobile ad company that itself was the subject of a takeover by Singtel only two months ago, has now bought an ad startup of its own: AdJitsu, a specialist in “3D” advertising technologies that let users “touch” objects in ads and explore them.

Trevor Healy, the CEO of Amobee, says that… → Read More

April 22nd, 2012

Thriving Amid An Explosion of UDID Alternatives

udid-explosion

The mobile app industry is in a state of confusion in the wake of Apple’s recent measures to wean developers from the UDID (Unique Device Identifier), a function broadly used for determining the effectiveness of mobile advertising.

In the short term, it seems that notions of an imminent Apple ban on use of UDIDs are premature. However, most in the market have concluded that they need to move… → Read More

April 21st, 2012

Real-Time Research: iOS Dominates Over Android When It Comes To Usage, Says Chitika

chitika pie chart

Android, by most accounts, is proving to be the most popular smartphone platform when it comes to devices getting sold today — partly due to the sheer variety of devices and price points that are out there. But a new research tool that tracks usage in real-time shows that when it comes to usage, consumers, in the U.S. at least, are far more active on Apple’s devices than on any other.

The… → Read More

April 4th, 2012

Eight Mobile Ad Companies Get Behind ODIN In A Quest To Replace The UDID

odin

More than a half-dozen mobile ad companies are getting behind a working group called ODIN to find a new way of tracking and identifying iOS users that still respects their privacy. This is happening because Apple is pressuring developers to stop using an older method called UDIDs (or unique device ID numbers) faster than previously thought amid criticism that it compromises privacy.

Velti… → Read More

March 13th, 2012

Quattro Alums Launch Mobile Targeting Startup Adelphic, Raise $2M

adelphix mobile

Two mobile veterans who worked together at Quattro Wireless, the mobile ad network that formed the basis of Apple’s iAd program, are announcing a new company today called Adelphic Mobile.

Jennifer Lum, who was the vice president of ad ops at Quattro, tells me that me that she teamed up with her Quattro colleague Changfeng Wang because they wanted to tackle some of the unsolved problems in… → Read More

March 7th, 2012

Moolah Media Announces Mobile Display Network To Take On “Blind” Competitors

moolah media

Moolah Media may be focused on performance-based mobile ads, but it isn’t ignoring the display advertising side of things — today it’s announcing a display network of its own.

CEO Shawn Scheuer says a display network has always been on the company’s road map. By opening up more inventory, this is another way to serve Moolah’s existing advertisers. Before this, he says the company wasn’t able… → Read More

March 6th, 2012

Jumptap: Android, iOS Now 91% Of All Mobile Ad Traffic, Kindle Fire 33% Of All Tablet Use

Screen shot 2012-03-06 at 11.22.44

The onward march for Android and Apple continues apace, and leaves a big question mark for how other platforms can hope to compete, at least in the U.S. market: New figures out from Jumptap indicate that in the month of January, the two combined made up 91 percent of all smartphone traffic on its U.S. mobile ad network — representing a new high for the two most-dominant mobile phone… → Read More

March 5th, 2012

More Mobile Ad Consolidation: Carrier SingTel Buys Amobee For $321 Million

amobee_logo

The mobile ad market is projected to bring in revenues of $2.6 billion this year, and while that is only a small fraction of the wider opportunity in digital advertising, the space — fueled by the smartphone boom — is only going to get bigger, and that is attracting those looking for an early foothold. Today saw another example of that coming into shape: pan-Asian carrier SingTel today announced… → Read More

February 24th, 2012

First Look: Survey Warns Of Consumers Turning Off From Digital Ads

on off switch

With all the developments we’ve seen in online advertising over the years, you’d have thought that someone would have figured out how to put a halt to what must be one of the biggest issues of all: people are getting fed up with digital ads.

A new report from YouGov, commissioned by mobile marketing company Upstream, spells out some of the problems: people feel like there are too many ads… → Read More

February 20th, 2012

Flurry: Mobile Ads Still Get The Short Straw In Brand Spend; Women Driving eCPMs

MobileAdSpend_vs_TimeSpent-resized-600

There have been some big numbers thrown at the medium of mobile advertising recently — eMarketer says it will make $2.6 billion in the U.S. alone this year; the IAB says that 72 percent of top brand marketers are going to increase spend in the medium in the next two years.

But some new research from app analytics firm Flurry throws a little bit of cold water on what, exactly, is happening in… → Read More

February 18th, 2012

Mobile Advertising Is The Baby Huey Of The Media World (And Apple Is Taking The Low Road)

screen-shot-2011-12-15-at-2-42-57-am

I had dinner last week with a senior exec from a global advertising holding company who asked what I often get asked these days, “What’s going on with mobile advertising?” it’s a timely question as last week Apple announced they were lowering the buy-in price for iAds from $500,000 to $100,000 and increasing the publisher revenue share from 60% to 70%. The move seems innocent enough, but… → Read More

February 17th, 2012

Analyst: Facebook Will Make $1.2 Billion Annually From Mobile Ads

facebook mobile ad revenues

No, Facebook is not advertising yet on mobile platforms. Yes, that hasn’t stopped people from speculating on what it will mean when it does. The latest: an estimate of how much the social network stands to make from mobile advertising: $1.2 billion a year in the U.S. and its five biggest markets in Europe — the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The numbers come from UK-based analyst firm… → Read More

February 16th, 2012

Opera Snaps Up Mobile Theory, 4th Screen For $26M In Mobile Ad Push

opera browser

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… → Read More

February 8th, 2012

Nine Months From Launch, Chartboost’s Mobile Ad Marketplace Reaches 1 Billion Impressions

692f85a751nwhite

Mobile advertising took off in 2011, as tablets went mainstream and it seemed as if half of the world woke out of a daze to find they were holding some sort of Apple device. Meanwhile, advertisers and developers are increasingly relying on mobile and in-app advertising to boost revenues as consumers become more comfortable with being served ads while on the go.

The mobile app community needs… → Read More

February 2nd, 2012

Mobile Ad Network Mojiva Reaches 1 Billion Devices

mojiva

Mobile ad startup Mojiva is the latest startup to start throwing around the word “billion” in its press releases. The company says it now reaches one billion unique devices each month.

Of those devices, about 224 million are in the United States, Mojiva says. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, account for 33 million, 10.6 million, and 8.7 million devices, respectively. Overall, Mojiva says… → Read More

January 26th, 2012

Android Dominates Moolah Media’s Mobile Ads

Moolah

It looks like publishers and advertisers are warming to mobile ad startup Moolah Media. The company says that in 2011, it generated 7 million leads for its advertisers — and 1.9 million of those leads (27 percent of the year’s total) came in December.

Also in December, Moolah says its ads reached 45 million Americans. And interest in the company is growing — Moolah projects that traffic to… → Read More

January 21st, 2012

Cowen: Google’s Mobile Ad Revenues Could Surge To $5.8 Billion In 2012

google-mobile

How much does Google make in advertising from mobile? Cowen analyst Jim Friedland estimates that Google is generating $7 per year from each smartphone (and tablet). This includes both search and display advertising in mobile apps on both Android and iOS (iPhones and iPads). Thanks to the rapid growth in smart mobile devices from an estimated 509 million last year to nearly double that in 2012 to… → Read More

January 10th, 2012

Medialets Turns On Private Marketplace For Mobile Ads

Medialets Private Marketplace

Buying mobile ads across different apps and mobile sites is a highly inefficient process today. There are dozens of ad formats, about 85 percent of mobile ad inventory goes unsold, and it is difficult for advertisers to reach the scale they require. Mobile ads are ripe for a marketplace to make it more efficient, but publishers are wary of ad marketplaces, having seen how they pushed down average… → Read More

December 15th, 2011

In Mobile Advertising, Does Size Matter?

Screen shot 2011-12-15 at 2.42.57 AM

It’s the motion in the ocean that counts, right? Wrong. Well, at least that’s how it looks when it comes to mobile advertising. (Look out, inneractive infographic below!) If you take Google at its word, then 2011 has been the year of the tablet. Or in their words, this year tablets “went mainstream”. Sure, Google would say that, as the creator of a rapidly-propagating mobile OS, right? Well, with→ Read More

November 16th, 2011

PapayaMobile & Tapjoy Announce Partnership On New Social Marketplace For Mobile

papayatapjoy

Social gaming network PapayaMobile and the value exchange-based mobile ad network Tapjoy are today announcing a partnership that will combine the power of their two communities to help Android users better discover new mobile games. The jointly developed product will be called “Social Marketplace” and it will serve to recommend new games to mobile users based on their popularity among a user’s… → Read More

October 29th, 2011

Nokia Vs. The Industry: A Look At The Global Battle Over Mobile Advertising [Infographic]

nokia-logo-may-08

Mobile advertising as you’ve likely heard, is hott right now. (With two “t’s”, yes.) According to comScore, mobile advertising spend is projected to hit $2.5 billion by 2014, with $2.7 billion projected in mobile ad revenues for this year and $6.6 billion by 2016.

What’s more, in August, 84.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones, and that number continues to grow… → Read More

July 22nd, 2011

Android vs. iOS: The Heated Battle Over Mobile Advertising [Infographic]

ios-vs-android1

With U.S. mobile ad revenues expected to hit $2.8 billion by 2015, according to BIA/Kelsey, it’s becoming pretty clear that mobile advertising is growing like gangbusters. This is largely thanks to the rising ubiquity of smartphones, as comScore showed in its May report, which included the eye-grabbing fact that 76.8 million Americans now own a smartphone.

Of course, the big players in mobile… → Read More

April 25th, 2011

PlaceIQ's Location-Aware Advertising Can Target You Block By Block

It used to be that all a marketer needed to know was your zipcode, and they could infer your income range and a whole host of other demographic data about you. But with everyone now using mobile phones that can be targeted down to exact GPS coordinates at different times of the day, areas bounded by zipcodes seem vast in comparison. Imagine if instead marketers could break up the world into 100… → Read More

April 20th, 2011

How PayPal Can Help Where Close The Loop From Mobile Intent To Purchase

Why is eBay buying Where.com? It’s all about trying to link mobile ads directly to payments. Where will fall under PayPal. The geo-location service and mobile advertising company already has millions of active users across many mobile platforms (it is stronger on Android than on the iPhone). Where serves up both recommendations for nearby places to places to eat, drink, play, or shop and… → Read More

September 22nd, 2010

TextualAds Brings SMS Marketing To Facebook Fans

Brands and businesses are increasingly setting up Facebook Fan pages, which acts as their social homepage on Facebook where they can interact with customers and hopefully find new ones. These Fan pages can be customized with all sorts of tabs and apps. A new app launching today called TextualAds, in the same space as Textopoly, lets marketers ask for their fans’ phone numbers and send them… → Read More