The view from admob - the mobile market and new stuff planned

Admob is a company that I admire enormously for what it has built (a mobile 2.0 business with scale) and for what it has brought to the mobile ecosystem (a way of monetising free mobile content and the ability to effectively promote mobile services).  The CEO, Omar Hamoui, just released a statement to all publishers and advertisers, following their series C financing, which makes very interesting reading, key highlights are:

• they are going to be launching targeting by handset and daypart (handset targeting will be fantastic - great to be able to focus on N95 users for example)
• admob is ramping up sales efforts across the world (again this is great - there is a lot more inventory on the network now and fill rates appear to be falling, which they acknowlege)
• new types of ad formats to adapt to new devices (e.g iphone)
• still room for growth in mobile internet advertising, despite the downturn (yep, post to follow on this subject)

Anyway, I'm sure they wont mind if I reproduce the communication here:

"Hello from AdMob,

 

I hope all is well with you and your team. It has been a wild year for us and I'm sure it has been for you as well. Everyone is rightfully concerned about the global economy.  We are too. But at the same time we are optimistic about the growth of the mobile media industry in 2009 across the world. I wanted to share some details on AdMob's business and direction, and I was hoping we could receive your valuable feedback and take your thoughts & ideas into account as we innovate and grow into next year.

We expect that history will repeat itself and that advertisers will choose media options that offer reach, quality and profitable return on investment. We launched AdMob Mobile Analytics in July so that the entire mobile internet ecosystem could benefit from data-driven insights. We're thrilled that we're seeing advertisers from every segment use these tools to measure the return on their advertising investments. The exciting effect of this is that the tool is removing uncertainty, and enabling our customers to justify larger mobile ad budgets. Almost all of them have confirmed that mobile will be an even bigger part of their marketing mix in 2009.

Recently we announced that we have completed our Series C Financing.  We are using our new funding in three ways.  1) Technology that further improves ROI for all of advertisers including campaign targeting (day parting and handset targeting are coming soon), optimization technology, and robust campaign measurement technologies. 2) More sales personnel across the US, EMEA, Asia, and the Spanish speaking markets to bring new advertisers into our marketplace, and 3) Developing new advertising units for the fast-growth next generation devices , like we have with the iPhone.

Keeping an advertising network perfectly balanced is always challenging. The macro factors of better phones, faster networks, and more affordable data packages, plus the addition of many more new publishing partners to our network in the last 3 months, has caused the advertising dollars in our marketplace to be spread more broadly. At the same time, our advertising deal flow continues to grow and we expect it will catch up with available inventory shortly. But short term imbalances aside, fundamentally, the largest dollars will always flow to media options that have reach, that work, and deliver the best value. Our technology combined with your high quality mobile media offering is what delivers the best value, and that's why we remain optimistic and enthusiastic about our growth." I love this company - great communication and great strategy - go admob!