VentureBeat

How Apple brought AdMob from zero to 4 billion-plus ad requests

On the eve of the announcement of what may be Steve Jobs’ magnum opus, the Apple tablet, mobile advertising network AdMob charted the rise of the company’s last blockbuster product, the iPhone, and how it was the catalyst for rapid growth in the mobile ad market.

AdMob points out that it wasn’t necessarily the phone itself that triggered growth in mobile advertising, but rather successive improvements like the... Continue Reading

AdMob: Apple may break its tie with Nokia for world domination

It’s almost like Apple and Nokia are locked in a neck-and-neck game of Risk. The former, with its iPhone OS, is the dominant force in North America, Western Europe, Latin America and Oceania, while the latter, running the Symbian OS, still leads in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, according to December 2009 survey data published by mobile advertising network AdMob. But data shows that Apple may finally be making inroads on a global level.

It’s... Continue Reading

Android closes in on iPhone ad traffic in AdMob’s latest report

Google’s open-source Android operating system accounted for more than one in four of the smartphone ads served in November by AdMob, the mobile ad network that Google agreed to buy for $750 million six weeks ago. That’s up from 20 percent in October.

That means Apple’s iPhone, which seemed untouchable only a few months ago, has a fast-rising competitor. Apple’s share of ad requests is twice as big — 55% — but Android traffic is... Continue Reading

AdMob launches interactive video ads on the iPhone

AdMob, the mobile ad network that Google plans to acquire for $750 million, announced that it’s supporting a new kind of iPhone ad — interactive video.

This is the first interactive video ad unit for iPhones, AdMob says. Mainly, the new feature allows application developers to run a video ad while the application is loading, the way video sometimes plays when you load a website. (You’re a big fan of those ads, right?) Advertisers can... Continue Reading

Google to buy mobile advertising network AdMob for $750 million

Google said it will buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in stock today, letting the search giant further muscle its way into mobile advertising and extend the dominance it has built on the web in search-based advertising.

San Mateo-based AdMob (see our profile) is the biggest player in mobile web and app ads, a market that has become particularly sexy now that smartphones such as the iPhone and other mobile-browser friendly devices are driving... Continue Reading

AdMob: Dumbphones still draw 60 percent of mobile ads

The latest monthly report from mobile ad network AdMob, which claims to be the world’s largest, contains a sharp reminder for smartphone fans: Non-smartphones, which the mobile industry calls “feature phones,” still distribute 60 percent of the ads in AdMob’s network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications. Here’s the current Top 10 list by number of handsets.

... Continue Reading

AdMob finds Android app users more scarce, but just as obsessed as iPhone app users

Updated

The latest monthly report from mobile ad network AdMob, which surveyed 1,117 users, finds that consumers who download apps onto an Android handset or an iPhone behave very much alike.

The big gap between them is that only 19 percent of Android users download at least one paid application per month, compared to 40 and 50 percent for iPod Touch and iPhone owners, respectively.

“However,” AdMob writes, “users who purchase paid apps on either... Continue Reading

AdMob Q&A: “As eyeballs shift to mobile, advertising dollars follow”

Mobile ad network AdMob expects to serve its 100 billionth ad today, which averages out to 14 of ‘em for every one of us on the planet. Mobile phones now outnumber PCs worldwide by 4 billion to 1.5 billion, according to the United Nations.

The mobile ad market lets almost anyone buy a couple of ads, and almost anyone serve them on their website. But the money, insiders agree, is at the premium end of... Continue Reading

AdMob’s 100 billionth ad marks a two-pronged mobile ad turnaround

Today, three and a half years after mobile ad network AdMob was founded by serial entrepreneur Omar Hamoui, the company is about to serve its 100 billionth ad. That’s 14 ad impressions for everyone on Earth. AdMob claims, probably rightly, to be the world’s largest mobile ad server, even ahead of Millennial Media, which serves the majority of the ads delivered to America’s most-subscribed wireless carrier, Verizon.

AdMob’s milestone comes just as the Great Advertising... Continue Reading

iPhone app report: A few top hits dominate the rest

AdMob, probably the largest server of ads to iPhone screens, has released its May Mobile Metrics Report, which you can download as a PDF file. The report breaks down the mobile ad market in several countries, showing which handsets are the most popular.

But the one set of stats in the report that everyone should memorize are those that measure the spread of popularity among apps. Here’s what AdMob found for the 2,300 apps that... Continue Reading

AdMob shuts off ad aggregators

Update: Representatives from AdMob and AdWhirl are continuing the discussion in the comments below this article.

AdMob, the 800-pound gorilla of iPhone ad networks, plans to stop allowing other ad networks to deliver its ads as part of a multi-network service. While the company claims user complaints over broken ads was the major driver, the move will allow AdMob to keep a larger cut of ad revenue — 50 percent is common.

AdMob serves about... Continue Reading

iPhone, iPod touch users hit the Net from their handsets more than a computer

The latest report from AdMob and comScore won’t shock you, but it might make you rethink your priorities. Forty percent of iPhone and iPod touch users access the Internet more from their little best friend than they do from a computer.

Here are the highlights of the report, which AdMob emailed to us on Monday:

- 5 in 10 consumers on both iPhone and iPod touch devices use the mobile Web more frequently than they... Continue Reading

Motally to deliver reliable mobile analytics

Existing techniques for measuring mobile traffic to Web sites are pretty awful.

Motally, provider of an analytics platform for mobile phones, has emerged from stealth with $1 million raised from BlueRun Ventures and well-known Silicon Valley angel Ron Conway. The company says it wants to establish analytics standards for the mobile space like those that Google, comScore and Nielsen use to measure web site traffic and data on the internet.

The San Francisco company is... Continue Reading

AdMob readies new types of ads for iPhone 3.0

AdMob serves six billion mobile ads per month. And when iPhone 3.0 arrives this summer, the mobile ad company will be rolling out several new ad formats tailored to the device. So advertisers will be locked and loaded with ads that rival casual games for interactive fun.

The company will offer four new formats:

· Mobile Social Networking –- These ads will connect to the user’s Twitter feed, Facebook page, Digg, MySpace account, Flickr photos,... Continue Reading

JumpTap launches mobile AdWords competitor

Heavily funded mobile search and advertising startup JumpTap is launching a new mobile ad marketplace called tapMatch, which it says will offer a more targeted approach than the competition.

The Cambridge, Mass. company already offers mobile search and display advertising, but tapMatch is JumpTap’s answer to Google’s AdWords, where advertisers can bid to have their ads (usually just a few lines of text) appear next to specific keywords. In tapMatch’s case, those ads can appear... Continue Reading

Why developers are more excited about the iPhone

AdMob threw an iPhone meetup last Thursday night. The meeting was surprisingly well attended as developers showed strong interest in understanding what business models are working on the iPhone platform. The excitement of the developer community prompted some important questions about why the iPhone is getting a disproportionate amount of developer attention compared to Nokia’s Ovi, Google Market, Blackberry Appstore or Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Ewan MacLeod started the discussion with this post.... Continue Reading

Report: iPhone and Android taking everyone else’s market share

The iPhone’s operating system provided 50 percent of U.S. advertising requests to Admob last month, according to a report the mobile ad network published today.

Meanwhile, the seminal Android-powered G1, built by HTC, has grown to 5 percent only three months after launch, the report says. These numbers don’t provide a comprehensive window into the smartphone web and app market — Admob is just adding up requests that its graphical and text ads receive due... Continue Reading

AdMob and MADS partner to create global mobile ad behemoth

AdMob, which boasts it’s the world’s leading mobile advertising company, has teamed up with MADS, a European mobile ad company, in a strategic alliance to create a global behemoth.

The move is significant because it extends AdMob’s reach in an area where it was relatively weak: Serving ads for high-end publishers across a multitude of mobile channels such as SMS, MMS and the mobile web.

In some ways, you can compare AdMob’s mobile offering to... Continue Reading

More funding for mobile ads: AdMob raises $12.5M

Mobile ad network AdMob has raised a $12.5 million addition to its latest round of venture funding, bringing its third round to $28.2 million in all.

In a blog post announcing the funding, chief executive Omar Hamoui says the new cash will help AdMob “cement our leadership position by making the investments that will help us to come out of this challenging economic environment even stronger than when we went in.” The San Mateo, Calif.-based... Continue Reading

Roundup: Obama’s environmental policy, Sun’s big loss, and more

Here’s the latest (mostly depressing) action:

President Obama reverses Bush policy on environment — Obama endorsed California’s strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and vowed that the federal government will follow suit. Auto manufacturers’ responses were “similar in their ambiguity and political correctness,” according to The New York Times.

Sun posts a $209M loss — At fault are falling demands for servers and storage, as well as a big restructuring charge.

AdMob offering... Continue Reading