mjelly mobile 2.0 blog:

« February 2009 | Main | April 2009 »

iphone screen cracked app - banned by apple - #fridayfun

Bit of fun for a friday - icemobile the Amsterdam based mobile marketing agency - created an iphone app for an insurance company as a promotional tool which was rejected by the Apple appstore ...

The app works like this ... after you open it and touch the icon, a virtual crack appears on the screen followed by a load of falling icons. Here's a video of it:

03/27/2009 in iphone | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Twitter statistics

Nielsen has released some twitter statistics which make interesting reading:

fastest growing community site with a 1382% increase in visits Feb 09 vs Feb 08
visits from 475,000 uniques in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009 a 1,382 percent uplift
User base (% of total)

-35 - 49 - 42%
-25-34 - 20%
-55+ - 17%

average user accesses twitter 14 times per month and spends 7 minutes on the site

735k of users accessed twitter via a mobile device

812k SMS were sent to twitter from AT&T and Verizon networks in the US

03/25/2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Google mobile adwords/ adsense / search marketing - free report

A bit late to this but worth pointing out - the guys at mippin have released a free report which goes into a lot of detail about their experiences using google mobile ad words. There are loads of guides online to using PC-based google ad services but virtually nothing for mobile - until mippin released this guide. Mippin cover a load of stuff including:|

Mobile Ad Campaign Components
Quality Score on Mobile
Maximising Relevance in Mobile Ads
Mobile Traffic - Driving Volume
Mobile Ad Creative
Mobile Ad Campaign Objectives
Mobile Control Testing

If you're doing any kind of mobile affiliate marketing or building a mobile internet service this is essential reading.

You can grab the report here:

http://mippin.com/mip/raw/static/Mippin_Adwords_Mobile_Learnings_140209.pdf

03/25/2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

iphone 3.0 roundup over at MM 2.0

You can read mjelly's regular mobile internet, media and advertising roundup over at Mobile Messaging 2.0 which this week focuses on distilling the key points from the iphone 3.0 release.

If you look past the hype there's some important features in the new release, particularly in terms of the appstore rather than the 3.0 OS. Apple has really raised the game again, as the others e.g. Ovi, Microsoft, Blackberry are scrambling to launch.

Anyway - go check it out at:

http://www.mobilemessaging2.com/2009/03/18/iphone-30-new-appstore-features-mobile-web-usage-statistic/

03/24/2009 in iphone | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mobile Affiliate Programs

update: you can check out mobyaffiliates.com for in-depth info about mobile affiliate networks and listings of mobile affiliate programs

Following a post on mobile internet affiliate marketing, we've been getting a lot of emails asking about mobile affiliate programs. Mobpartner - one of the major players in mobile affiliate marketing just announced a new mobile affiliate program on their platform - Pleex.

#Update2 - I found another mobile affiliate network called MPEX which is worth checking out

Pleex is a software that lets your users to backup and store their mobile data: pictures, videos, mp3s and contacts between their phone and the web.

Here are the payout rates for a new account created in these countries - european users generate the highest payouts:

France: $0.50
United Kingdom: $0.35
Spain: $0.35
Italy: $0.35
Germany: $0.20
Other European countries: $0.20
United States: $0.20
India: $0.10
African countries: $0.10
All others countries: $0.08

Sign-up to the Pleex affiliate program here

Mobpartner has a load other mobile web CPA programs available:

Mobiluck

MobiLuck is a free mobile site that allows you to earn money for each visitor that creates an account on MobiLuck from your link. It is free to join the service so should be fairly easy to convert, again the highest payout rates are for European markets.

Payouts

France : $0.55
United Kingdom : $0.45
Spain : $0.45
Germany : $0.23
United States : $0.18
Portugal : $0.18
Saudi Arabia : $0.18
United Arab Emirates : $0.14
All others countries : $0.09

Sign-up to the mobiluck affiliate program here

Jamster

The jamster mobile site offers branded popular content from around the world including chart-topping music from top music labels, mobile games, and original content made exclusively for mobile phones.

2 countries are open on the mobpartner platform : USA and United Kingdom - they say 17 new countries are coming soon

Revenue : Jamster/Jamba provides $7 on each sale (e.g. a sign-up to one of their subscription schemes)

Sign-up to the jamster affiliate program here

With the cost of mobile ad inventory falling this is a great time for mobile affiliate marketers (cheaper traffic available, plus less opportunity cost from not running mobile ads instead of affiliate programs). Watch this space for more stuff on mobile affiliate marketing...

You can find more mobile affiliate programs at mobyaffiliates.com

03/19/2009 in mobile marketing | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

More iphone platform analysis and debate

Just received another really great comment on the post on iphone statistics from Teemu, one of the original cru behind Jaiku and the author of a presentation on the iphone containing the following calculations:

- 20 m iphones but all have flat rate data plans and at least 50% of users know about apps = 10m customer base

- 1bn java phones but only 0.01 % have data plans, 10% know about apps = 1m customer base

Here is his comment, responding to Alex from phonething who questioned the numbers:

"Hi Alex and James, the presentation is mine, and the figures warrant an explanation. During the presentation, I emphasize that this is more of a thought game: exact figures are not important, order of magnitude is.

That said, there's my own research behind the numbers in question and they take into account some facts that PR material of platform providers don't. First, there's absolutely no point to lump different Symbian platforms together (250M): developing and distributing apps for NTT Docomo phones is totally different game than doing it for S60. UI work is usually the biggest part of an end-user application, reusing a few bits of engine code is a marginal saving. They are two different platforms.

Second, even S60 is not one platform from a developer perspective. It's far from easy to support all old platform versions. I know from experience that supporting S60 2nd edition in addition to S60 3rd ed. is a considerable amount of work and most of the companies don't do it.

What about Java then? 2.6B phones out there, sure, but talk to any Java ME developer and you understand how hard it is to support even a good percentage of them. 1B is more like an order of magnitude number.

A more explanation about the numbers in comments of my blog:
http://dirtyaura.org/blog/2009/03/10/mobiledevcamp-slides-platform-stage/#comment-443

In any case, Alex I really appreciate people like you that question numbers.

What about Ovi Store: I've high hopes for it as a Co-Founder of a company developing mobile apps. But it really depends how Nokia can execute on all levels: how many deals with operators are done (not easily scalable task), in how many countries (for the volumes, only sensible billing option is a phone bill based one), and how good is the user experience of Ovi store for both end-users and publishers.

Cheers, Teemu"

03/19/2009 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

New mobile advertising podcast featuring mjelly

Just recorded the first in a regular series (every couple of weeks) of podcasts on mobile advertising and mobile affiliate marketing. There are loads of podcasts out there for internet advertising/ marketing and for online affiliates but nothing (until now) for mobile.

The guy behind the podcast is Peter Glaeser from the Berlin-based mobile affiliate marketing and advertising startup Sponsormob. It's being syndicated on the podcast network Geekcast.fm.

In the first episode we discuss some of the latest news from the mobile advertising sector including admob's recent price drop and why MOBILE is the biggest, most exciting area of the online space right now.

You can listen to the show here:

http://geekcast.fm/podpress_trac/web/956/0/mobilespace-002.mp3

Subscribe here http://geekcast.fm/archives/category/mobile-space/feed/

Here's the link to the show page:

http://geekcast.fm/archives/category/mobile-space/

03/18/2009 in mobile advertising | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

admob price drop - lower cost mobile inventory

Admob recently announced a big price drop on certain bits of inventory. As the biggest player in the mobile advertising industry admob's pricing really makes a big difference to the market overall. The reduction in costs for certain ads potentially opens up the market for PPC arbitrage in mobile for people using mobile affiliate marketing or other mobile advertising networks. Also the drop in iphone advertising prices in particular might open up opportunities for iphone developers looking for a way of promoting their app.

For publishers running admob's ads this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, fill rates for inventory have skyrocketed after being at a very low level earlier this year. On the other hand, higher fill rates come at the cost of a lower eCPM. It may be that admob is lowering its prices as publishers are starting to use mobile ad network aggregators and their own ad servers to push in inventory from other mobile ad networks to make up the gap left by admob's higher prices.

The details of the price cuts are below:

iphone ads

For iPhone ads targeting all United States traffic (i.e., all US with no further targeting options selected), the minimum bid will decrease from $0.10 to $0.05.

Ads targeting specific carriers
The minimum bid for targeting for big 4 US carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile & Verizon) will remain unchanged, ranging from $0.11 - $0.15. The minimum bid for targeting for all other carriers will decrease from between $0.11 - $0.15 to $0.05.

Ads targeting all countries and carriers
For non-iPhone ads targeting all countries and carriers (i.e., no further targeting options selected), the minimum bid will decrease from $0.03 to $0.01.

03/18/2009 in iphone, mobile advertising, mobile internet, mobile marketing, mobile web | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

iphone - the counter argument

A great comment from Alex of phonething.com on the post about iphone statistics which deserves it's own post rather than rotting in the comments section. Here's what he says:

"The iPhone as a platform is great, but it really needs to be put into perspective. The presentation you link to does not look reliable - some of the numbers are wildly wrong for a start. E.g. J2ME had shipped on over 2.6 billion phones several months ago, not 1 billion. Symbian has shipped on over 250 million phones, not 100 million. Now, many S60/J2ME will be retired, but I can't believe to the extent given by the numbers in this presentation, especially given handset and subscriber growth and the traffic in 2nd hand phones (e.g. to developing nations).

I also want some proof or corroboration of the 0.01% have data plans and 10% know about apps. How earth does the presenter know these figures? These are questionable even without his other glaring errors.

Also, at this point in time, I'd say Ovi Store is a potentially far greater platform than iPhone, the numbers will vastly, vastly outweigh iPhone and it will be on S40 too. Yes, it could all go horribly wrong, but I think iPhone may find it's position at the top of the appstore tree seriously upended."

Personally, while I don't think the iphone is the be-all and end-all of mobile internet or mobile software the evidence is stacking up that's its impact FAR OUTWEIGHS the number of devices shipped. I am not sure Nokia will do well at all with the OVI store - their ability to build digital services is questionable at best and OVI doesn't have the ecosystem around it that itunes did - which really helped the apps store to take-off (people were already registered with the billing system, already had a client on their computers).

What do you think? Is the iphone over-hyped as a platform or is the data telling us that it really is a game-changer? Can Nokia and the rest catch up?

03/18/2009 in iphone | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)