Mobile advertising companies - Before and after

I'm speaking today on a conference - INMA (International Newspaper Marketing Association) in Vienna today about mobile advertising (will inform about that alter).

But I was actually doing an overview of mobile advertising companies, but found an older slide and I decided to make a little comparison. The mobile advertising market has been consolidating in the last few years, and as you know, a lot of the companies changed owners. Here is a little before and after piece.

Mobile IM market: eBuddy shows numbers, reports 2 million active!

Articles about Mobile IM and Instant Messaging in general were one of the most popular articles on the site, so I have decided to keep moving in this area, and inform a bit more. As I mentioned in the article about IM and Mobile IM, the two most interesting players in mobile are probably eBuddy and Fring. Today we have a great chance to present the numbers from eBuddy.


eBuddy as a product is also a very interesting product, as it includes multiple networks, where you can login to services like MSN, ICQ, AOL, Gtalk, Yahoo, Facebook chat, and Myspace chat. A variety of the top, and probably all services worldwide. I have never seen a combination this wide and this well interpreted as in eBuddy mobile.

Key Mobile facts about eBuddy

• 8M mobile client J2ME downloads since June 2007 mobile IM client launch; now growing at a rate of over 1M mobile client J2ME downloads per month
• 2M+ monthly unique users on mobile
• Unique monthly mobile users represent a 185% Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)
• Currently processing more than 1.5 billion mobile messages per month

The top 10 countries for eBuddy mobile IM are:

• UK
• US
• Netherlands
• France
• Canada
• Mexico
• India
• Indonesia
• Brunei
• Egypt

I believe this is very interesting and new information about eBuddy, and that this also makes it the largest mobile instant messenger - worldwide. I am very glad to have the opportunity to present these numbers, and let's hope to see more mobile services this successful. Congratulations to eBuddy!

As eBuddy doesn't present itself that often, please also see below other information about them on the PC.

Other Key facts about eBuddy (Web and PC)

• 60M users in eBuddy database
• 14M+ monthly unique users on web
• Currently processing more than 3.7 billion messages per month (Web and mobile)
• More than 1.5B banner impressions served per month
• Google Zeitgeist 2007 report: 7th fastest rising search term (globally)
• Deals in play with top 20 media agencies
• Worldwide player with market dominance in most countries
• Total online time for all user sessions has grown consistently to over 6000 years per month in 2008
• eBuddy is the IM player to benefit from coming mobile-Web convergence

eBuddy (www.ebuddy.com) created the world’s first, independent, web browser-based instant messaging service and extended the service to mobile in June 2007. Its patent-pending technology enables more than 16M unique monthly global visitors with AIM, Facebook, GoogleTalk, ICQ, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! IM accounts to chat free of charge in one, aggregated interface. eBuddy’s mobile IM solution - m.ebuddy.com – offers both a J2ME and browser-based IM service and allows millions of unique monthly users access on their mobile phone, independent of carrier or device via WAP or mobile Internet browser. eBuddy is based in Amsterdamwith additional offices in London and San Francisco, and is a privately-held company backed by Prime Technology Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners.

Note: All this information comes directly from eBuddy as a source.

Admob mistakens Slovakia for Russia

Little bugs and issues in applications are a thing that people who work with developers on a daily basis are common with. You learn how to fix them, laugh at th

em, finnish them off.  A very respected person in the industry has informed me about a mistake that is really worth a laugh, but the issue is it is for one of the largest mobile advertising company worldwide - Admob.  

The company has mistaken two European countries, one of them being quite major, on their regular map: Slovakia (population: 5 million) on the map with Russia (population: 141 million people). See map below. 

Admob is a leading company in the area of mobile advertising with around 3 billion ad impressions served every month and almost 50 billion delivered so far. 

It pops up in my head that I would like to think that a company that has been invested tens of millions of dollars of VC money should be able to do bett

er than that. Well but everyone makes mistakes, and this is not one that would take revenue away or harm any of the business, but a nice story for a Monday morning. 

Good luck to Admob, they've been doing a great job on the market so far, and hope they fix this little mistake. 

Not to forget, here is the map screenshot: 

Major challenges mobile browsers face

Mobile browsers on most phones that are out there on the market today face main challenges, the key one is their quality of rendering, which also involves of course the memory of the handsets.

Let me sum up some facts on mobile browsers:

1. Native browsers suck = try browsing mobile web i.e. on a Samsung handset. You use it, when you close the sliding phone, the site or download falls down with no other options, etc.
   
   
2. New browsers are not there yet = although coming, I wrote some thought recently on the Google Chrome Mobile, read my blog for more information
   
   
3. iPhone browsers are still not enough for  internet to be real on a handsets - most companies still optimise the mobile handsets
   
   
4. The most spread out resolution worldwide is still 128 or 176 pixels on width, giving the user little space to be able to navigate the site

So the challenges mobile browsers will face as a result of mobile is:

• Screen size will be limited to around 200 pixels of width = either understand it and use it, don't try to put internet on the devices
  
  
• Memory of the handsets are slow, they need very optimised pages = developers please be aware of this, make light pages
  
  
• Mobile browsers need some level of JAVA script or equivalent of an easy scripting language, flashlite is not an alternative because of speed and obvious memory issues - API's can be more widespread

Let's see what happens and how mobile browsers will evolve - it's a long-shot, but I just wanted to throw it in the ring for readers to follow my train of thoughts.

iPhone actually supports the smartphone market for competition

I sent the article iPhone to sell 5 mil. by end of 2008 - But what next? to Vassili le Moigne from Microsoft, and he gave me a beautiful comment on it:

"The biggest value the iPhone brings to the picture is not the 5M it will sell (too small on the grand scale of the smartphone market and non scalable without a platform play) but the education it does for the masses about doing more with a phone than just talk. Indeed, all their marketing and using their brand is helping educate the consumer market to the value of smartphones, effectively giving a boost to the past efforts of Symbian, Windows Mobile and RIM in the business segment. Consumers might buy their first smartphone with the iPhone, but chances are that, by the time they get their second smartphone, 6 to 9 months from now, they will be much better educated about what they want (vs. the brand value they bought). At that point, it will up to Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Eten, RIM, Asus, Moto, HP, LG, and so on to show that they (think they) know better than Apple (a newcomer in that market, unlikey to have a new phone within 12 months) what smartphones are supposed to be like (keyboards, mobile email, MS Word, SMS, UMTS,...). And by then, you can bet the different OEM will have learnt from Apple on the design and usability. 

Apple is therefore growing the market for everybody."

Chrome Mobile to be Chrome Lite and be compatible with all handsets

Today I would also like to follow-up on the article on Will Google Chrome be mobile? which also followed a comment from Michael (Chromevoice.com), who agreed with the article. To add up ontop of  that, recently Engadget reported that Android and the new Android OS will have a Google Chrome like browser. 

ChromeVoice also reported, that:

"During the press conference, the question came up about whether the G1 would use Chrome and the answer came back, “Yes, call it Chrome Lite”. "

We are very much looking to that browser, which Engadget reports Google is also preparing a version for Symbian, Nokia, Microsoft, and Apple handsets. That would be a true breakthrogh in the world of compatible mobile handsets, so let's see where it gets. 

iPhone to sell 5 mil. by end of 2008 - But what next?

According to Techtree [link], Apple is supposed to sell 5 mln. iPhone and iPhone 3G devices totally worldwide by end of Q4 2008.

Let's stop a little and see - how much is really 5 million devices in the grand scale of things?

There is a total of 3 billion handsets worldwide, and Nokia leads, with about 1 billion handsets sold worldwide (37% market share). On the grand scale of things, this gives iPhone a 0,16% market share worldwide. 

What is to come next? Well if iPhone sells 5 - 10 million devices every year, they will in 3 years have a 1% marketshare globally, which is impressive for just one series of handsets, but in that time other manufacturers will copy, and copy well.

Just for comparison: There are 200 million Symbian devices (source)

Mobile services will go up very soon!

Mobile services are to become very big any year now. For the last 3 years, I also heard that that is going to be the year of mobile advertising. 2008, in a way, has been that year, but what is upcoming is even more exciting. Mobile services - application or browser based - will ramp up very soon.

Why?

a) DEVICES

1. iPhone - We have seen a great deal of work from Apple on the iPhone UI, and soon to be released the Gphone UI, which is also expected to be something fantastic. But what does that mean for other normal phone users? People use the mobile applications more, they have a nicer experience with them, and when they also get a united place to buy/download applications - it makes the products fantastic.
   
   
2. Nokia - Currently, mobile phones UI's from Nokia are not that good. If I took a look at the latest Nokias that are out there on the market (not those just being sold, the latest models) - the ones massively distributed throughout with people, they are not so good. BUT on the other hand if you look at the latest N96 phones and others, the UI has very much improved, and this type of UI will gain usage
   
   
3. Followers - Other handset manufacturers currently follow the trend, and follow it pretty well, so the handsets get more and more alike, which is good for the end-user. Although the fragmentation is still there (oh.. but OK...)

b) SERVICES

The second obvious reason for the growth will be finally existance of more mobile services - massive growth in this area. New mobile web services, local companies going mobile, google mobilizing all of it's services, facebook with mobile version - companies finally realize that "being mobile" is very important, and that they too have to be mobile - and it's slowly coming into realisation. 

Growth?

We are talking about growth here that will be in hundreds of percent, and will result in bigger usage of mobile phones for more then just calling - the 10% of early adopter population that now uses mobile internet (official data from all around Europeans mobile operators) will show the other 90% on how to really use it, and show them how cool it is to do that. And at least another 20 - 30% of that will convert in the following months to come, and the usage will be better and better.

Also, I believe this will ramp mobile advertising, and slowly, it will not just become a market for content companies to place their subscription ads, and will become a medium for brands. 

So, we are all looking forward to this trend, aren't we? 

How does mobile video advertising work?

Someone asked me recently how does mobile video advertising work, and seeing a question on LinkedIn made me prepare a quick article on it. 

First of all let's look at it technically, technically networks are there technologically, most networks in Europe are UMTS (1 Mbit) or HSDPA (3 Mbit) enabled, but the problem with streaming video is not that, but the coverage of these networks, which is still mostly in main cities, thus making it difficult to distribute.

Another big barrier is handset, whereas players and other are not yet completely there and connected. Even the Real Player in Symbian phones sometimes reconnects the settings, which for a regular user is a complete nightmare to change, usually a dead end. 

There are several methods how to do mobile video advertising:

• Mobile video pre-roll / post-roll
  - a short clip before or after a movie (my market suggestions would say no longer then 4 - 5 seconds for like 30 second clips)
• Little in-roll from the top or an appearance of the brand
• Sponsored video

How to distribute? 

• Streaming - launch it to existing mobile video sites
• Downloads - launch several clips for download somewhere and have people download and share them offline
• As text ads by the videos - another offered alternative would be text ads by the videos
• Mobile games - Of course, the other alternative is to put the mobile video ads in mobile game wraps, if they offer them, which I wrote about in yesterday's post. 

Best companies to recommend?

• Probably would recommend the company Transpera for the job, they do a lot of mobile video 

Where is mobile video advertising heading?

My opinion is that mobile video will be a strong medium, but mobile web advertising and other will be stronger. There is no real possible interaction from the mobile video ads, which makes it much less attractive, also targetting and behavioural marketing is not applicable. I would suggest and think through a better mobile ads campaign. 

How does mobile game advertising work?

How Does Mobile Advergaming Work

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