Viet Son Net

Smartphones represented 48 percent of worldwide AdMob traffic in February 2010 according to the mobile advertising network’s latest Mobile Metrics Report–a year earlier, smartphones made up 35 percent of the firm’s global traffic. AdMob credited the surge to iPhone and Android traffic, fueled by heavy application usage. While the overall percentage of feature phone traffic slipped from 48 percent to 35 percent year-over-year, AdMob adds absolute traffic from mass-market devices grew 31 percent. Web-enabled portable media devices like Apple’s iPod touch and Sony’s PSP account for the remainder of AdMob traffic.

Smartphone requests were led by  the iPhone OS at 50 percent, up from 33 percent a year ago–conversely, Symbian-based requests plummeted from 43 percent in February 2009 to 18 percent. Android devices now account for 24 percent of AdMob smartphone requests, up from 2 percent a year earlier.

For more on AdMob’s latest Mobile Metrics Report:
- read this release

Android smartphone impressions across the Millennial Media mobile advertising network grew 25 percent in February, the operating system’s largest month-to-month increase to date, according to Millennial’s latest U.S. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting. Despite Android’s growth, Apple remains the number one device manufacturer, generating 39 percent of Millennial impressions last month; in all, smartphones represented approximately 61 percent of impressions, up 2 percent over January, and the firm now reaches 58.1 million unique U.S. subscribers, translating to 83 percent of total mobile web users. Average monthly page views slipped from 126.9 to 118.8, but average session user time jumped from 4:57 in January to 5:14 in February, the longest session time recorded since the June 2009 S.M.A.R.T.

Other Millennial findings last month:

• Application downloads demonstrated a third consecutive month of growth, and now represent 19 percent of the Campaign Destination Mix. Together, traffic to site and application downloads now make up 65 percent of campaign destinations on the Millennial network.
• Application Download and Place Call were the leading campaign calls-to-action, accounting for 31 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
• Audience-speci?c targeting methods like Custom Subnet, Demographic and Audience represented 39 percent of all campaign targeting methods combined.

For more on the February 2010 S.M.A.R.T.:
- read this release

Google anticipates significant growth for its arsenal of mobile services according to executives who participated in a Monday webcast outlining the digital services giant’s wireless vision. “Google has bet big on mobile,” Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said, stating that its mobile search traffic has grown five times over the past two years. “When we see desktop usage decline, like when people go out to lunch, that’s when we see mobile spike. We think these are brand-new searches that we would never have seen previously.” Services like Google Maps for Mobile are also seeing massive consumer adoption, with more than 50 million active users–eventually, Google will optimize all of its services for the mobile platform, Gundotra said.

Noting that a quarter of Android and iPhone users who download applications to their smartphones spend up to two hours each day with those apps, Gundotra also touted the possibilities of app-based mobile advertising, and said Google is presently working with handpicked partners including Urbanspoon and Shazam to trial new in-app ad solutions.

Despite the looming threat that Google will pull its search services from China over ongoing censorship battles with the nation’s government, CFO Patrick Pichette said he believes the company’s Android mobile operating system “should flourish” in the Chinese market. Appearing on the webcast alongside Gundotra, Pichette contended that Android is an open-source platform available to a variety of manufacturing partners and should perform favorably in China regardless of Google’s squabbles with legislators.

For more on Google’s mobile outlook:
- read this PCWorld article

Apple devices represented 36.22 percent of impressions across the Millennial Media mobile advertising network in January, according to the firm’s latest U.S. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting–the largest percentage share since the S.M.A.R.T. commenced publication in March 2009. Together with handsets running Research In Motion’s BlackBerry operating system, iPhone OS-based devices now account for more than 77 percent of total Millennial impressions in the U.S. –smartphones from all manufacturers make up 58 percent of all impressions, a 20 percent month-over-month jump.

Millennial Media presently reaches 54.3 million unique U.S. subscribers in all, translating to 81 percent of the current 67 million American mobile web users reported by Nielsen. The S.M.A.R.T. adds that the average number of monthly page views per user edged up to 127 in January, compared to 125 in December 2009; average user session time slipped to 4:57, down from 5:09 a month earlier. Traffic-to-site represented 45 percent of mobile ad campaign destinations in January, up 6 percent month-over-month–the number of campaigns directing users to a custom landing page accounts for 34 percent, up 14 percent over December, with application downloads representing 16 percent.

For more on the January 2010 S.M.A.R.T.:
- read this release

Consumers on the iPhone and Android platforms exhibit similar activity levels, downloading roughly the same total number of applications and spending about the same amount of time using them, according to mobile advertising firm AdMob’s January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report. However, AdMob reports that iPhone users continue to download more paid apps than other smartphone users, with 50 percent of iPhone owners purchasing at least one premium app per month, compared to 21 percent of Android users.

iPod touch owners download an average of 12 applications a month, 37 percent more than iPhone and Android users who download roughly nine new apps each, AdMob notes. By comparison, Palm webOS users downloaded an average of six applications per month. While iPod touch users devote an average of 100 minutes per day to using applications, webOS users spend an average of 87 minutes per day, followed by Android users at 80 minutes and iPhone users at 79 minutes per day. Seventy-three percent of Android users are male, compared to 56 percent of iPhone OS users; the average iPhone user is 14 years older than the average iPod touch user, 78 percent of whom are under age 24.

The iPhone represented 47 percent of U.S. smartphone usage across the AdMob network in January, followed by Android (39 percent), BlackBerry (7 percent) and webOS (3 percent). The AdMob report also notes the growth of web-enabled hardware, stating that about 17 percent of January’s mobile ad requests originated via non-phone devices, compared to 12 percent in July 2009. Among consumers asked if they own a mobile Internet device or plan to purchase one within the next six months, iPhone users showed the highest level of interest in purchasing an iPad at 16 percent, compared to 11 percent of webOS users and just 6 percent of Android users–about the same percentage who expressed interest in buying an Amazon Kindle ereader.

For more on the AdMob January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report:
- read this release

During its annual BlackBerry Developer Conference in November 2009, Research In Motion announced the wheels were in motion to introduce a new services platform enabling developer partners to integrate mobile advertising into their BlackBerry applications. RIM has divulged next to nothing about the project in the months since, but a new U.S. patent filing uncovered by MobileSyrup.com hints at what the device maker is planning.

The patent, which outlines a “System and method for incorporating multimedia content into a message handled by a mobile phone,” states “Multimedia content can be incorporated into a message handled by a mobile device with minimum invasiveness by utilizing linking mechanisms that are visually identifiable with certain content and can reveal the multimedia content, e.g. an advertisement, upon selection. This may be done by examining content in the message handled by a mobile device and matching portions of the message with predetermined criteria such as keywords or phrases. Upon finding matches, corresponding multimedia content is associated with a respective portion of the message content and access to the multimedia content is enabled through selection of a linking mechanism that is visually identifiable with the respective portion of the message. The message is modified to include such linking mechanisms such that upon viewing the modified message, a user may reveal the multimedia content by selecting the linking mechanism.”

The RIM patent also underscores the importance of targeted, relevant ad content. “Advertising may only be effective if the user is interested in the content and can become a nuisance if the user is overwhelmed with too much content, or content that may be deemed inappropriate or irrelevant… On a mobile device, although the user may have access to such broadcast content and may be able to access particular media, various other uses of the mobile device may command the user’s attention at various times during a given day. As such, advertising on a mobile device can be more challenging than simply associating generic advertising content with a given medium.”

For more on the RIM mobile advertising patent:
- read this MobileSyrup.com article