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Created by myuill on Dec 18, 2008
Last updated: 02/27/13 at 11:18 PM
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Millions of people use Shazam on their smartphones to identify songs they hear playing.
But did you know that for the past 2 years, Shazam has also been used to make TV ads interactive?
Here is an update from Shazam on the most most popular adverts, as well as some advice for effective 2nd screen advertising. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6139
The mobile web landscape continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid pace, with new devices, new development technologies, new ad serving requirements, and new design paradigms all adding to the challenge of excellent mobile web development.
Now a group of web designers have put together a website of “Best Practices” to help all developers address these challenges. This resource is really worth a look! (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6132
Augmented reality isn’t a particularly new concept, and quite a few mobile apps incorporate it - often for gaming purposes. Now however, one company has found a unique use for AR technology: potty training.
Kimberly Clark, the company behind Huggies Pull Ups, has created a free app to help children and their parents work together through this special event. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6111
Despite the fact a huge number of us now carry a smartphone in our pocket, mobile advertisers have their sights set higher: the iPad has become the most in-demand platform for the industry.
A new study from mobile ad exchange MoPub showed that while ad prices overall rose 50% in Q4 2012, Android prices went up 54%, iOS ad prices across the board rose 66% with iPad prices being the highest of all. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6106
One of last year’s more impressive infographics came from the folks at Formstack, the appropriately titled ‘Toolbox of the small business marketing cycle’.
The infograph looks at each of the five steps of the marketing cycle, and provides information, recommendations and tools for each stage. Check it out, there are a number of gems for the marketing-savvy small business owner. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6117
Mobile optimization is the most exciting digital opportunity for marketers in 2013, according to new research by Econsultancy.
For several years the mobile industry has been pushing brands to accept the necessity to present a great presence over the mobile channel. But only now this seems to have become accepted by marketers, as 43% agreed that mobile optimization was this year’s top priority. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6108
4 February, 2013
London, UK
Ever wondered how the creative thought process works behind the scenes? Come to the Creative Mobile Fight Club! (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6123
In just 10 days from now the US Superbowl football game will take place in New Orleans. Over the years, the Superbowl has become a showcase for TV advertising, with audiences over 150 million people and ad prices up to US$4 million for a 30 second spot!
2013 is the second year that the game is being streamed live on the internet, and the ad inventory for this “second screen” has been moving rapidly. And some brands, such as Coca-Cola, are working hard to involve multiple screens in their campaigns. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6118
Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, periodically puts out a paper looking at the most significant trends in the internet and mobile, as well as her view for the likely future.
Her latest work was presented to a group of students at Stanford University in December of 2012. It provides a fascinating overview of two of the biggest forces shaping our lives today. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6071
Do consumers really “vote with their feet”? Absolutely.
An iOS photo editing and sharing app has seen its user base rise nearly half a million following the fall-out from Instagram’s controversial new Terms of Service announced last month. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=6089
Back in late 2006 I was working in South Africa and was in the mall one day when I received a bluetooth marketing message over the phone. This was completely amazing and something that I'd never seen before in the UK or anywhere else. Anyway I blogged about it here and got in contact with the company behind it, WCIT.
Anyway, the founder of the company behind that initiative has written a fantastic analysis of his experience starting, and ultimately closing that business.
If you're interested in learning the lessons of an early player in mobile location based marketing this is an essential read. It's also interesting to anyone interested in startups. You can download the pdf for free below
Download Microsoft Word - Mobile Phones, Bluetooth and Location Based Marketing num
or you can grab the book for Kindle here
http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Bluetooth-location-marketing-ebook/dp/B005VGRHR2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319735848&sr=8-1
http://blog.mjelly.com/2011/11/the-story-of-an-early-location-based-mobile-marketing-startup.html
One of the jobs I did back in the day was selling mobile phones for Orange. The best thing about the job was some of the people that you worked with that knew absolutely everything about all the latest handsets. In those days they had just launches colour phones (the Ericsson T68!) and bluetooth and GPRS was at the bleeding edge of technology so things were a lot less complicated than today.
Whilst us mobile phone geeks as well as young kids know all about the latest handsets and features the average punter finds it difficult to get their heads around what 'Android' means or why you cant get Angry Birds on a Blackberry. When you think of all the different operating systems now, all with different ways to do even basic things like change the screensaver or ringtone, add a contact or connect to Wi-Fi it's pretty clear that many people are going to have real trouble navigating all this technology. In my day the hardest thing you would have to do is show an old lady how to use text messaging - imaging having to explain how to download an app...
So the UK mobile operator O2's latest customer initiative looks interesting - they have a network of O2 Guru's in stores that are trained up to answer questions about how to use your phone. They've now extended this onto an O2 Guru channel on youtube. Quite a smart bit of 'education based marketing' which is what the sales masters are recommending these days as the best strategy for selling to people.
O2 YouTube Channel
O2 then have links back to their online store - effectively extending the model that they are operating in stores onto the internet. Not a bad bid of youtube marketing - a lot of attention is on facebook marketing these days but this shows there's a fair bit of room for innovating using other social platforms. It's a good idea to use video as well - a lot of people dont like reading a lot of text and it's much easier to explain stuff.
Back to the mobile gurus that I used to work with in the Orange shop back in the day. If you look at the model used here there is no reason why someone couldnt create their own mobile phone review and tech channel on youtube and build a massive audience. Howard Chui did it with http://www.howardforums.com years ago and new technology creates a new opportunity to become an authority. With affiliate marketing sales of mobile contracts, handsets and so on you could make a good living out of this. Very similar to what Gary Vaynerchuck advocates in his book Crush It! - if you have a passion about something the tools are now there to make a living from it.
Anyway good to see an operator trying out different marketing channels and trying to solve a problem for consumers rather than blowing money on TV ads.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2011/01/a-clever-use-of-youtube-for-selling-mobile-phones-from-o2-.html
The crew behind the 02 Litmus mobile application store are now working over at Telefonica Developer Communities and pumping out some good stuff over on the blog there. Carnival of the Mobilists regular C Enrique Ortiz has written up a guide to the facebook APIs for mobile which is well worth a look. There's some other good writing there including a piece by Tom Hume from Future Platforms and they've also sponsored a very good bit of research by Vision Mobile on Developer Economics.Mobile operators have typically struggled to build strong developer communities but Telefonica are going the right way about it by trying to add a bit of value with the free reports and so on. So worth checking out what they are up to.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/09/using-the-facebook-api-on-mobile.html
So a follow up to my previous posts on App Store SEO and App store SEO Trick. Here's a rather spammy but clever technique for leveraging the success of top games uncovered by Marco. Developers are creating products that complement the top hit games in the appstore such as Angry Birds. They are creating apps such as "Angry Bird Cheats" which allow them to cross sell to Angry Birds buyers and get traffic.
The spammy component is that they are using the name and branding of the game they are covering, presumably without permission. The thing is those that uncover these type of techniques before they get banned get probably do pretty well out of it in the window of opportunity that is available. Also this technique does point towards other legitimate approaches. For example, the Angry Birds publisher could develop many more spin-off products using the brand name e.g. their official Angry Birds cheats and so on or other complementary apps. Publishers increasingly need to develop networked strategies in order to succeed in app store marketing and related products is one potential option.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/05/app-store-seo-another-new-technique.html
Reblogging this from the mobyaffiliates blog - the summary - it is hard to make PPC mobile ad networks pay off on an arbitrage basis with mobile affiliate or lead generation programs.
Using mobile PPC ad network arbitrage for affiliate marketing
Ok so a lot of people are getting interested in mobile affiliate marketing and whether there is a PPC arbitrage model yet on mobile. Can you take traffic from a pay per click mobile advertising network such as admob or inmobi and drive it to a CPA-based mobile affiliate program and make a profit?
In some cases this can work, but it needs very careful management, tracking and targeting. One of the issues with mobile advertising at the moment is that the quality of a lot of traffic on the blind mobile ad networks if of questionable quality, which makes conversions pretty poor in a lot of cases. Here's an example - the chart below shows the results from two different types of traffic - using organic traffic on a site controlled by us, and using traffic bought on admob. The creative, landing page and offer was exactly the same in both cases however the conversion rate was hugely different.
Comparison of organic and admob traffic performance
As you can see from the data the organic traffic performed over 25 times better in terms of conversions. Despite having 3.5 times as many clicks the traffic from admob only delivered less than 25% of the revenue of the organic traffic. We have had a lot of success using admob for various things and it is a fantastic tool but you need to be very clever about how you test and target by geography, handset and platform to get the most out of it.
So - what should affiliate marketers take from this? No you should not totally rule out using PPC on mobile, but it is very hard to make it work - just like on the PC web. Let us know any questions in the comments or on our forum and we'll try and answer them.
Related articles by Zemanta
Affiliate marketing - the new business model for mobile app developers? (mobyaffiliates.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/04/affiliate-marketing-with-pay-per-click-mobile-advertising.html
So the post on iphone appstore SEO has been very popular - here's a new trick which I just spotted out in the wild. So one factor in your iphone appstore ranking is the number of reviews. Storm8, a mobile games developer has worked out a great way of encouraging users to leave reviews and more generally promote their games. They have a feature in all their role play games called "recruit" where you add other players to carry out missions and gain points. As a result, this has lead to an increase in reviews on the appstore as users will publish their player ID in the review as a way of getting more recruits into their network. Very clever - Storm8 have had every single game they publish get into the top 10 on the appstore so they are one to watch.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/03/iphone-appstore-seo-new-trick.html
Music recognition company Shazam has teamed up with Dockers, the casual men’s wear brand from Levi to pioneer an innovative new type of consumer engagement ad to air during the US Superbowl game.
Consumers can use Shazam to “tag” the music in the ad, and thereby gain access to a specially developed product mobile website!
(more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=4322
Mobile operator Orange UK has launched a new advertising program called Orange Shots, which lets advertisers communicate directly with Orange subscribers using mobile messaging. This service is the first result of the partnership between Orange and Blyk.
The full service includes consulting and creative support, the use of the interactive marketing platform, plus a full suite of reporting and analysis tools. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=4304
Cross Posting this from http://mobyaffiliates.com - its an overview of the mobile internet affiliate marketing sector and mcommerce in 2010.
Mobile Internet Affiliate MarketingView more presentations from mobyaffiliates.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/01/mobile-internet-affiliate-marketing-presentation.html
So mobile internet is finally hitting the big time - with the "Youtube moment" at the end of the last year being the acquisition of admob, closely followed by Apple buying up Quattro Wireless at the start of this year. However, it's not just the ad networks that are getting snapped up - already M&A is moving down up value chain into the agency space and down the value chain into the ad optimizers. Firstly, RingRing Media, a mobile ad agency and media buyer in London got snapped up by Amobee Systems a few days ago. The rumoured price was £12m - not bad for a company founded in 2008 and grown to £2m a month in gross revenue with only small investments. Congratulations to Ben and Harry the co-founders at RingRing. Secondly, we learn that the ad optimizer/ ad network aggregator AdMarvel has been bought by Opera. Ad Marvel started life as a B2C play called Frengo and spun off a service that helps mobile sites and apps to manage their ad inventory through analytics, ad serving and real-time pricing data. With Mary Meeker predicting that mobile is the big tech trend of the next decade we can expect more acquisitions like this over the next year, which means more investment at the other end of the pipeline. VCs and other investors will be more willing to move into mobile now that they can see the big exits happening and real value being created. So what are the opportunities in the mobile ad space for startups and investors? Here's a few ideas:
New types of mobile advertising networks - the first wave of ad networks have all been based on a fairly straightforward CPC, banner and text ad driven model served over a general range of sites. If you look at the PC-web there are a huge range of different types of ad networks out there, often targeting very specific verticals or offering particular types of inventory. Is there room for a vertically-focused ad network on mobile? Similarly, the likes of Greystripe have focused on full-screen rich media ads, but there have got to be other new formats and ideas that can work on mobile.
Mobile agencies - with mobile advertising hotting up all the big digital agencies will need to burnish their mobile credentials. The recession probably held back acquisitions last year but expect 2010 to lead to more M&A in this space.
Mobile commerce - retail is still the major un-charted territory on the mobile internet and mobile affiliate marketing is still very under-developed. At the same time people are becoming more willing to buy on their mobiles and this will create opportunities for new players.
That's it for now shout out in the comments if you have any views on what the opportunities are.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2010/01/more-mobile-advertising-acquisitions-means-more-investment-in-mobile.html
A new metrics report from ad optimization company Smaato highlights the difference in click-through rates seen on different phone operating systems.
The winner? Symbian, by a wide margin. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=4271
The mobile advertising market continued to heat up recently, with Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad platform and network company.
This move follows only weeks after global internet search company Google acquired rival ad networkAdMob. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=4268
Location-based applications are becoming more popular as better positioning systems are built into more mobile devices. This report analyzes the location-based apps from the Apple App Store, RIM App World, and Android Market. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=4257
The mjelly post arguing that admob got a bargain paying just $750m for admob is over at Mobile Stance this week as part of the Carnival of the Mobilists. It's the 200th edition and there's some more analysis of the admob acqusition including a great post from Msearchgroove which goes into some detail.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/11/carnival-of-the-mobilists-200-over-at-mobile-stance.html
So admob just announced they've been acquired by Google for $750m. In my view they got a bargain:
admob is easily the biggest mobile ad network out there in terms of overall scale
in particular, admob has the best position in terms of the iphone (scale of inventory)
admob has the best data on the mobile internet and iphone app ecosystem through its admob metrics and admob analytics services
admob has invested in developing new types of ad units e.g. those that use location etc
admob is strong in the key US and European markets
the company has a great team - all the senior people at admob i have met are decent people who really know their stuff
google has been comprehensively out-innovated and out-performed by admob, so they need to acquire them to catch up in mobile ads
Welovemobile have a good post on the subject here
In some ways I am disappointed that admob didn't manage to make a $1bn exit - I really think they could have built the business to that type of scale. I'd speculate the reasons why they didn't hang on for more are:
Falling click through rates for mobile advertising as consumers become banner blind to mobile display ads, the same as on the web
Proliferation of other types of ad networks and ad aggregators in the market
Some strong competitors in particular regions e.g. Inmobi in India
Big brands etc slower to move spend into mobile than expected due to the credit crunch, over-reliance on low quality advertisers (casino etc)
If I were Google I would follow this up with another acquisition of one of the other ad networks which is stronger in the other markets admob has not focused on e.g. buzz city or inmobi. I wouldn't be surprised if they also acquired one of the premium ad networks e.g. Quattro Wireless either. Anyway, great job by admob - they really deserved this win.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/11/why-google-got-a-bargain-with-admob-acquisition.html
Carnival of the Mobilists no. 199 is over at Mobileslate this week and they featured our post on iphone app store statistics. There's a load of other posts including from Tomi Ahohen and a podcast from the one like Peggy Anne Saltz at the excellent msearchgroove.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/11/app-store-statistics.html
Anyone who needs to write a presentation or report on anything to do with mobile, iphone or app stores needs to get research and statistics on the app store to help back up their arguments. For example, you might want to know the number of apps in the app store by category. Also developers, publishers and marketers also need to get their heads around the data to help shape services and so on. So here's a list of sources of iphone app store statistics plus some key highlights from a recent presentation on the subject: Sources of iphone appstore stats
Pinchmedia - release data on apps generated by their mobile analytics product such as this presentation Distimo - offer a premium appstore analytics service, but also release some data for freeFlurry - similar to pinch media - release data from their analytics product on their blog
148apps.biz - have a great section on "app store metrics" with data by category and type of app, prices, no of apps etc
Mobclix - lots of nice graphs and lists of top apps by type Appsfire - the social app sharing tool has some good stuff on their blog Admob Metrics - mainly covers iphone browsing but sometimes some useful app-based data - they run a big iphone ad exchange and probably the largest iphone ad network so have good data Comscore - have been releasing a lot of good top 10 information on the app store since they acquired m:metrics - check their blog for releasesFinally the big iphone app aggregators such as appshopper and apptism are also a useful source of data, especially on number of apps submitted and so on Also worth checking out is this presentation from Stuart Dredge - have pasted in the key appstore data highlights below:Appstore key facts and figures
Addressable base of 50 million
100k apps available
More than 2bn downloads so far
iPhone games market worth $2.8bn by 2014
Avg user has spent $80 on 65 apps
Avg user downloads 10/18 apps a month
90% browse and download on the device
30-day retention rate for games – 72%
But 90-day retention rate is 16%
Appstore top 100 games analysis
Own-IP is popular – 58% of Top 100 Paid chart
Pricing pressure – Avg price in Top 100 is $2.89
But avg price in Top 10 is $2.09 (and $1.21 without Rock Band)
45 games cost $0.99
Rapid churn – 59% of Top 100 released since August
Level playing field – 47% indie, 38% publishers
EA has 13 titles in Top 100, Gameloft has 12
Glu, DChoc, Tapulous have 3 apiece
Hope this is useful - let me know in the comments if you find any other sources of data.
Related articles by Zemantaiphone appstore SEO - 12 ways to improve your iphone app ranking (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/11/iphone-app-store-statistics.html
This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is over at Msearchgroove. We nearly won post of the week with our iphone Appstore Search And Discovery review but this week's winner is a post covering our favorite mobile internet service flirtomatic. There's a load of other good posts on there this week including from Mobithinking and Holly from Mobienthusiast so go check check it. Related articles by ZemantaIphone appstore SEO given top billing on the carnival of the mobilists (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/11/carnival-of-the-mobilists-at-msearchgroove.html
So it looks like the iphone appstore is going to break through 100k apps pretty soon with some of the big tech blogs already jumping the gun a bit and reporting it. This is another major milestone in terms of the scale of the iphone appstore and the growth of the mobile internet in general. At the current rate of growth there will be over 250k apps by some point in 2010. However, the current itunes appstore and native iphone appstore client is arguably not sufficient for providing a truly effective discovery channel for hundreds of thousands of applications. As a result, the sheer growth in the scale of the iphone ecosystem has created an opportunity for other services to help people search and navigate iphone applications. For example, one of the interesting memes of the recent Mobile 2.0 Conference in Barcelona was the idea from Dan Applequist that "Apps are like Songs". To some extent the appstore is becoming like itunes (the delivery
platform) and other services are emerging to be the last.fm or hype
machines of iphone apps. Similarly, Vision Mobile point out that as the iphone apps market matures, retailing will become the key part of the value chain with specialists emerging to focus on selling specific types of applications. "as with all fast moving consumer goods (from detergent to mobile
phones), retailing and merchandising is the most important segment of
the product lifecycle. As applications become ubiquitous, we see
specialized app stores with segment-specific retailing of apps,
inventory leasing for app promotions (CPC or per week rental as already
seen in the Ovi Store and RIM App Center), social recommendations (your
friends bought this app, so you should buy it too) and developer
back-channels (allowing the developer to reach out to their customers
via App Store facilities)."So here's a quick run down of some of the different types of services that are springing up around iphone app discovery. Social Social search and discovery has made a big impact on web search with the likes of delicious, stumbleupon and digg becoming important filters for the thousands of websites and pages out there. We can expect similar types of services to emerge to help people find applicaitons. At the moment, Appsfire is one g socially-focused iphone app discovery tool out there - it allows you to share a list of your iphone apps with friends and on twitter. Yappler also allows you to share list of iphone applications. Another similar service focused on social app discovery is Appboy, which recently launched as a kind of "threadless for iphone apps". App aggregatorsiphone app aggregators take advantage of the itunes affiliate API to republish all of the iphone appstore listings and provide a different type of interface to them. This means that users can hopefully surface different types of apps and have a choice of a different way of navigating them or browsing them to the standards itunes UI. There's an increasing number of these sites with the bigger ones being apptism, appshopper and 148apps. App review sitesOverlapping with the app aggregators to some extent are the specialist iphone app review sites which focus on providing editorial / blogging focused around providing reviews, opinion, news and screenshots to help people find the latest, and the best, iphone applications. Again, there is an increasing and growing list of these sites but the major ones include appvee, appstorehq and appcraver. MagazinesWhilst print media isn't the force it once was, there's still room for magazines to emerge around new trends, and iphone apps are no exception. Believe it or not there is actually a magazine on sale at the moment in the UK which is completely focused on providing a Guide to iphone applications. It's apparently in the second edition, and sells for £9.99. (no web link available, photo coming soon) Cross platform appstores
Whilst a lot of aggregators are focusing on providing a view into the iphone appstore only, there are some cross-platform open appstores beginning to emerge. The main one is getjar, which treats the iphone as just another handset and platform amongst the many others it supports on its site. Other cross platform stores include handango and mobihand.At mjelly we are also adding what we consider the best iphone applications to the site alongside those from other platforms. For apps like Nimbuzz, or Fring which are available on multiple platforms, we provide a single listing and rating for iphone as well as all the other major platforms. App GuidesSimilar to app reviews a number of sites are beginning to develop guides to apps across different verticals, For example, there's the App Guide from Macworld which covers apps by type or Apps for Everything from apple itself, which lists things like Apps for Cooks, apps for the Great Outdoors etcApple AdvertisingTo some extent the apple TV and print ads themselves are acting as a search and discovery tool for the appstore. The "there's an app for that" series highlights key applications, whilst the print ads typically show 10 or so applications and what they do. App appsFinally, in the ultimate circularity, iphone apps which help you to search the iphone app store are also popping up. For example, App Gems offers daily app suggestions. Applications search and discovery is definitely a rapidly evolving area and something we are very interested in over at mjelly so watch this space.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/10/iphone-appstore-search.html
The post on Appstore SEO has been getting a lot of attention and it was featured as the first post on last week's Carnival of the Mobilists over at Tams60 blog. There's some other good posts on mobile advertising and a cracker from mobithinking on "why mobile versions of sites still pay off". It seems that Peggy from Msearchgroove has taken over the Carnival organisation duties - massive thanks to Judy Breck from teh brilliatn Goldenswamp who has done an amazing job running the Carnival.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/10/iphone-appstore-seo-given-top-billing-on-the-carnival-of-the-mobilists.html
At the time of writing, the number of apps in the iphone app store looks set to push through the 100k mark for the first time and it's inevitable that the million mark will be reached at some point in the next few years. This means that developers and publishers increasingly need to turn to Appstore SEO as a way of improving visibility and driving downloads. Agencies such as Apress and Third Screen Labs are already beginning to offer SEO for the iphone app store as a service, but there's some simple stuff you can do yourself to improve the visibility of your app.
At present, the iphone app store search system pretty unsophisticated, which means that some of the tricks that stopped working many years ago in the PC web can still be effective. However, the app store search algorithm is rapidly evolving and already some methods such as keyword stuffing no longer work so easily. That said, there's still a lot you can do so here's a guide to the top 12 things you can do to improve your ranking.
1. Do your keyword research
Just like conventional SEO iphone appstore search engine optimization depends on an understanding of the types of keywords that users are going to be searching for. Once you understand this, you can think about including those that are relevant into your app listing in order to drive search traffic. High traffic keywords on the app store include:
Popular apps of the moment e.g. the top 100 charts
All time popular apps - the all time most popular and big iphone app brands such as Ocarina
Major PC-based online brands such as myspace, facebook, youtube and so on
Generic keywords like "fun" or "sex"
Iphone specific keywords such as "lite"
The guru of mobile internet SEO is Bryson Meurnior and he has put together a great list of iphone app store keywords based on mining of the app store search suggest feature.
The aim should be to find keywords that are related to, or relevant to your app. For example over at howtomakeiphoneapps they give the example of relevant keywords for a wine-related app such as “tasting note”, “wine journal”, “wine’ and so on.
Once you have a list of
keywords you can include them in your app listing.
2. Optimize your keyword list
In July iphone developers were asked to submit a list of keywords for new and existing apps. This looks set to become the key source of meta data for the appstore, to some extent, replacing or reducing in importance the weighting of some of the other fields which have been used in the past, such as the description text.
You are limited to 255 characters for your appstore keywords and these can be changed whenever you submit a new app version.
3. Optimize your description text
update: It seems this no longer works at all for new listings (existing listings still get the benefit) - thanks to Aaron from The Appency Press for the info in the comments
Until recently it was easy to game the apple app store search algorithm by including a load of keywords in the description text. This lead to a lot of blatant keyword stuffing - for example developers would include a long list of un-related but popular applications. For example by using devices like "similar to ... " or
"People who bought this also liked" or "If you like ... you'll like this
app" or "Recommended for fans of" it was possible to insert the names of the most popular apps and then achieve a ranking when users searched for them.
Some developers are even using words which might lead to their app
being listed in general itunes searches, e.g. when people are searching
for music or video. For example Zaptap is listing words like "Miami vice" and "Madonna".
However, it appears that already some developers are getting their apps rejected from the store for overdoing keyword stuffing like this. Simiarly, until
recently, digital chocoate was getting ranked for searches including
the word EA (for Electronic Arts) as they included the abrieviation ea.
for each. However, Digital Chocolate was forced to remove this
from the description text and their games no longer rank for the
keyword.
4. Use keywords in the app title and developer name
You can also incorporate keywords into other fields in the listing such as the app title and even developer name. This does still seem to be effective in achieving a ranking for certain keywords. For example, a user searching for "fun" sees a number of apps with "fun" in the title in the top search rankings. Again, there's balance to be struck here - if you are planning to build a long-term brand in the appstore with lots of releases, then altering your app title or developer name just to pick up a bit of short-term search traffic probably isn't a great idea. However, whilst it is still possible to get traffic to your app in this way it's definitely still worth considering.
5. Use numbers or the letter A in the app title
Using a blank or listing your app with a number at the beginning of the name ensure that the app will feature near the top of the results in the "sort by name" view under a specific category. It will also rank the app above others with the same value, but less optimized title in the other views like "release date". For example, "1001 pick up lines" or "AAA Bubblewrap".
It is likely thtat Apple will pick up on this fairly quickly but for now there's still benefits in using this sort of naming convention in order to rank higher in alphabetical list views.
6. Encourage reviews
One element to the Apple
app store search algorithm appears to be the number of reviews. However, users are not really prompted or encouraged to write a review,
except when an app is being deleted. As a result only around 0.5% of users leave a review, and this is often negative, as many don't even know they can leave one until they try and delete the app.
One option is to write your own reviews, which is something some developers seem to be doing. Although this isn't a long-term viable strategy it is well worth encouraging friends, family and friendly contacts to review your app when it first hits the app store and has no reviews at all.
Alternatively you can encourage users to write a review within your app or wherever your app is promoted. For example, the appirater code for iphone apps prompts users who have a launched an app 15 or more times, and used it for 30 days (and hence likely to be satisfied users) to leave a review in the appstore, with an on-screen pop up.
There are also options emerging for
buying reviews - for example Fuelmyapp
has recently launched and enables developers to gain app store reviews
in return for offering free downloads of premium applications to
users. Ratemyapp from The Appency Press is another similar service.
7. Use price drops
Another way of moving up the charts can be to reduce the price of your app. Firstly, many of the review sites and directories such as 148 apps specifically track price drops, which can help get your app picked up by them. Secondly, reducing the price of your app will obviously increase sales, all other things being equal, which can lead to increasing returns if you can generate enough additional demand to push into the charts. For example, the Wall Street Jounral recently reported that one of the leading games publishers had some success using this tactic: "PopCap Games Inc., maker of the popular Bejeweled puzzle game,
experimented in June by cutting the price on its Peggle game to 99
cents from $4.99 for four days. Peggle, which had been ranked at around
60 in top paid apps, shot up to second place within 24 hours.Andrew
Stein, PopCap's director of mobile business development, declined to
provide revenue figures but said sales during the discount period
increased 20 to 25 times the previous volume."document.write('');if ((!document.images && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/2.') >= 0)|| navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WebTV") >= 0) {document.write('');
8. Make your icon active
A nifty visual trick some developers are using is to include calls to action or price drop information in their icons. For example, the use of a "sale" text is already pretty widely established. Visual hooks like this can be very powerful so it's worth thinking of what can be included in your own icon, even something as small as an arrow can potentially have an impact on the number of clicks you might get.
Image via the ieverythingcafe
The guys over at A Clever Twist have also written a great guide to improving your iphone app icon - which is well worth a read.
9. Buy downloads
The more downloads your app has the higher it will rank in the popularity filter of the app store. One way of moving up the download rankings is to buy traffic to your iphone app store page using an iphone-friendly mobile ad network like admob or by paying for premium listing on getjar. Admob will even let you use your own inventory as credits in their network via their iphone app exchange, which means you don't have to spend anything directly.
However, if you are looking to boost into the top 100 charts then it is going to cost you. According to a study by adwhirl it costs at least $1850 per day to deliver the 2500 + daily downloads to hit the charts.
10. Make the most of your screenshots Once a user has
navigated to your app page on the app store the vast majority will not
read the description, but will quickly scan the screenshots. You need
to make sure these are as attractive as possible and draw people in to
encourage downloads. For example, show the most important screens and
demonstrate that key functionality. 11. Promote your app
An alternative to paying for downloads is to use other types of promotional methods. This includes conventional PR, social media (facebook, twitter, youtube), your own channels (e.g. your website) and submitting your app to the large numbers of iphone application review sites that are springing up such as apptism, appvee and appcraver. Ultimately, anything which drives buzz around your app can improve your appstore SEO, either directly via increased downloads (and rankings) or even through inclusion in Apple's own pick lists if you bring the app to the attention of an itunes recommended section manager/ editor.
12. Understand app store analytics
In order to optimize your app listing over time you need to be able to get information and analytics data. Appviz downloads all your iphone data on the fly and makes it easy for you to review it and see how your app is doing in terms of downloads. However, the native iphone app store analytics are pretty terrible. Distimo , Flurry and Pinch Media all offer different types of analytics and reporting solutions to help your optimize your app distribution.
Bonus Tip: List your app in directories
Finally, you should look to get your app listed in third party directories and aggregators. For example, you can list your app here at mjelly.com in our iphone applications directory. Each listing links to your iphone app store page from within a relevant category to help drive users, downloads and reviews.
That's it - as we say Appstore SEO is definitely changing fast so let us know what works for you in the comments.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/10/iphone-appstore-seo.html
The guys over at Welovemobile have announced the launch of a new BBC mobile search service as the result of a project they've been working on. We all know that mobile search is totally broken - Google have essentially stopped even bothering to provide a mobile specific version or index, so it's an area which desperately needs more innovation. At the same time, as the BBC note, mobile search is more important to them than ever, as mobile internet usage grows and there is more and more content available for mobile devices.
"There are thousands of BBC web pages on the mobile site, a whole world
of additional content that you more than likely don't know about. Offering search on mobile is a no-brainer - it gets you to the content
you want with the least possible effort ...."The new search service covers news, sport, radio & television web pages and iplayer radio and TV content.Welovemobile helped the BBC to create a
search interface design that incorporates 'best of breed' features from
other types of search engine and discovery interfaces. The aim of the
design is to allow for advanced content search and discovery, with the
emphasis on providing very relevant and personalised "content
surfacing" around the BBC's mobile content and services assets. The
search solution contains some interesting new content filtering and
presentaiton concepts and a slick UI.The BBC say it was a tough job coming up with the end solution: "our colleagues in Search
have had many 'interesting' challenges developing BBC search for
mobile. We know it's crucial to get the results right first time on
mobile ... we spent weeks fine tuning the search logic, weighting our search
terms, and we now know more about the idiosyncrasies of search logic
that we ever thought we would need to. Mobile search is still not perfect, but it's been a long time coming
and we wanted to get it launched .... "
The end result looks pretty good, and it's great that The BBC has invested
in developing a bespoke mobile search tool for its site, rather than
relying on a third party white label solution or just bunging in a
google or yahoo site search integration. According to Simon Liss from welovemobile what they have done for the BBC is to "...think mobile from the
ground up. We’ve applied what we know about mobile devices, mobile usage, user
experience and design to create what we believe is a truly original and
innovative search concept and interface.’
The
BBC mobile search product launched in an early Beta version on 3rd September - you can check it out at http://bbc.co.uk/mobile
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/09/bbcmobilesearch.html
Mobango was the mjelly.com mobile 2.0 service of the week over at Mobile Zeigeist a few weeks ago. Mobango is an interesting mobile startup based in London and Italy which is a bit like the mighty getjar in that it hosts applications but it also offers other content types like ringtones, video, wallpapers and so on. I spoke with the CEO of Mobango, Fabio Pezzotti and got some exclusive stats that show the huge scale that mobango now has in the market:
5 million unique visitors/ month
12 million visits/ month
60 million page views/ month
Downloads (2009 Jul 13 – 2009 Jul 19): 2,872,264
Registered developers: 23,245
Registered users: 4,864,284
Total Game/Application Files: 42,000
Mobango is now positioning itself as a promotional channel for application developers who can buy mobile advertising for their software on a "pay per download" basis. So - rather than paying admob for clicks, which might not lead to any installs, developers can work with Mobango on more of a CPA model. Anyway, you can read the full article over at Mobile Zeitgeist. You can find Mobango on the mjelly directory over at mjelly.com (PC)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/09/mobango.html
Turkcell, one of the world’s leading operators in the area of mobile advertising, has announced the successful trial of a new advertising service. TiklaKazan shows rich media ads at the end of each phone call, and provides free airminutes and coupons to subscribers. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3834
Mobile Applications are becoming more and more popular, and ever larger numbers of brands are coming out with their own “mobile app”.
The IAB UK recently recently worked with its members to put together a “Top 10″ list of things brands and agencies should be aware of when designing mobile applications. (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3832
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has opened a public review period for the next version of their Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines.
The review period is open to the public, and will run through 31 August, 2009. (the proposed guidelines are downloadable here). (more…)
http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3806
A belated link back to the Carnival of the Mobilists last week hosted by Rudy at mtrends. There's a load of great stuff on there as usual including from some of the best mobile commentators out there including Carlo at Mobhappy, Marek Pawloski, Tomi Ahohen and Denis from Wap Review. The content spans Mobile Widgets, App Stores, Touch screens, Mobile Widgets and mobile learning and is well worth a read. Here's the linkRudy has also launched an interested new company directory and business social network called dot open which you can check out at http://www.dotopen.com/
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/07/carnival-of-the-mobilists-over-at-mtrends.html
Just back from the Mobile 2.0 Conference in Barcelona - wow - what a great event! It was brilliant to be able to hang out with other mobile people from around the world and listen to a load of great talks, presentations and panels. The event was brilliantly organized and I think everyone got a load out of it. Highlights for me were:
brilliant group of people there ranging from one or two man iphone development teams to CEOs of the biggest mobile startups to representatives from Vodafone and other bigger companies
some great presentations from the likes of Skyhook Wireless, Future Platforms and Nokia
the smaller Developer Day which made a great complement to the main conference the day after
pitches from some great new startups like Distimo, Pikkoo, Layar and Zensify
friendly and positive atmosphere - was great to forget the recession and doom and gloom for a while and be around people working in an industry with some sort of growth prospects
the food and drink was great - breakfast pastries every morning and a wonderful lunch at the main conference
venues were good - Barcelona Activa and ESADE were both brilliant spaces
Some of the key themes included:
Mobile widgets / web apps have moved forward significantly but still suffer from fragmentation in terms of standards
Location really starting to take-off with the data from the use of location services emerging as something really valuable when combined with demographic and other segmentation info
Operators starting to open up with the launch of improved developer programs, APIs and their own app stores
Business models not evolving as fast as the technological possibilities and consumer take-up...
I'll be blogging some of my notes from the conference here and you can find stuff with the m20eu tag on slideshare and twitter. Thanks to Rudy, Miker and the team for organizing - I really appreciated it.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/good-times-at-mobile-20-in-barcelona-m20eu.html
The mobile search company Taptu has been on a bit of a roll recently - they closed a large round of funding, changed their branding, hit 1m searches per day and have been hard at work developing their iphone app and an index of touch sites. Like admob Taptu is another company that is great for the mobile 2.0 ecosystem and we are really lucky to have them in the UK - they are often at conferences speaking about what they are doing and also publish some great white papers. Steve Ives the CEO gave a presentation at the Mobile Web Summit and here's some of the key points and stats:Future of mobile is touch- 220m touch screens shipped this year - only a small proportion are iphones - touch is a fluent, relaxed way of mobile browsing ideal for MASS MARKET - 10% of the Quantcast top 1000 websites now have a touch-optimized mobile site (GREAT STAT!!)- this moves to just 0.5% when you expand to top 10k sites so a long way to go...Taptu is growing strongly - 60% of Taptu's audience is based in the USA- they had done 0.25m searches by Dec 07, 2.5m by June 08 and 25m by April 09- new iphone app coming out which allows browsing and searching of mobile touch sites (it looked great)Related articles by Zemanta Do touch screen phones represent a step-change for mobile internet? (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/taptu-mobile-search-mweb09.html
Tom Hume from the mobile development agency Future Platforms gave a nice presentation of day 2 of the Mobile Web Summit focused on the idea of play, engagment, happiness and mobile. The killer stat from this presentation was: - Mobile quiz app players usually played the games 3 times, this increased to 7.5 times on average if they entered a league table - Not just explained by these users being just generally more engaged - they played 2 times on average before entering and 5.6 times after entering league- shows power of social elements, gameplay etc in driving mobile Tom has written a short summary of his talk here:"My talk was looking at case studies of three mobile apps, two of which
we'd done (Puzzler and the Ghost Detector), and one being the mighty Smule (which I've written about before). The main point I was making is that - as I was chuffed to hear Dan mention in his opening talk on day two - "all interesting mobile apps have some sort of social element".
That said, this needn't involve all the classic paraphernalia of
"social media" - i.e. conversations, contact management, or identity -
and assuming that to be doing something social, you have to be building
a branded Facebook, or a blogging platform, seems a little... crude.
Audiences can be connected in more subtle ways, and as the examples of
the league tables we launched for Puzzler, and the opt-in rate for
Ghosty both show, these can lead to measurable increases in both uptake
and loyalty."Anyway the presentation is on slideshare and embedded below - it's well worth checking out:
Making people happy, for fun and profitView more OpenOffice presentations from twh.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/tom-hume-from-the-mobile-development-agency-future-platforms-gave-a-nice-presentation-of-day-2-of-the-mobile-web-summit-focus.html
Andy Smith, the Sales Director for admob was at the Mobile Web Summit last week talking about what they are up to. He also hung around a lot during the conference to talk to people which was brilliant - I had a load of questions as a publisher using admob answered by him. He really confirmed why I love admob as a company - great at what they do and nice people who contribute a lot to the mobile ecoystem. Anyway, enough of the props, here's a few notes from Andy's presentation.Mobile ad formats are becoming more developed:- Text link/ banners- Lozenge- Home-screen takeover- Video - Interstitial Actions "after the click" also expanding:- Microsite- Iphone app store (a lot of developer using admob to increase downloads and ranking on itunes)- mapping/ location (e.g. best buy showing your local store on mobile google maps) - Video streaming/ download (e.g. movie trailor) - itunes (e.g. for a band pushing to music download)- Click to call (actually very successful on mobile)- Form fill in / data capture - follow on Twitter (not seen that before - quite original)- add vcard to phone contactsCase Study - Capital FM iphone app advertised on admob- aiming to increase rank on app store via advertising- 1.35% click through rate - 8% conversion to app store download- 24k app store visites Related articles by Zemanta Happy Birthday admob (mjelly.com)
admob price drop - lower cost mobile inventory (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/admob-on-mobile-advertising-mweb09.html
Ilja Laurs the CEO of Getjar spoke at the Mobile Web Summit - Getjar is a mobile applications store that pre-dates the iphone app store by many years. They are now funded by Accel and doing great things in the space. Here's a few stats from the presenatation: - getjar has done 450m downloads to date - currently running at 35m downloads per month - 46k apps for all major platforms - 200k developer accounts- 35k active beta testers- have grown strongly since launch of the iphone appstore - expanded app market beyond iphone - aim to provide "everything for consumers'' - support all platforms, all types of apps, all types of device- aim to provide ''everything for developers'' - tools, distribution, monetisation - 1% of apps created by established companies - 99% are small 1-3 man shops- Google maps has 300 different builds on the getjar site!- Getjar now focusing on improving search and discovery by aligning results to segments e.g countries, devices, platforms - have the scale to do this - also offering billing - in-app billing 7* more effective than SMS billing in tests You can find getjar in the mjelly directoryRelated articles by Zemanta MM2.0 roundup:-iphone appstore statistics and success stories, Android Stats and Blackberry App World, mobile web data and more (mobilemessaging2.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/getjar-cross-platform-app-store-data-and-statistics-mweb09-.html
Mippin are a mobile content aggregation and portal company based in London and one of the most advanced companies in the world in terms of using applications stores as distribution channels. The clever thing mippin realised early on was that you don't need to invest huge amounts in creating full applications for each platform - by using a "wrapper" or "launcher" driving to a mobile website, you can have the best of both worlds - the distribution power of an appstorea and the screen real estate of an app on the device but with the lower development costs of a mobile site. Here's some notes on a great presentation on how they use application stores at the Mobile Web Summit from Robin Jewsbury Co-Founder and VP Development. I actually got them the slot for this presentation as I knew they would have loads of useful points and I wasn't disappointed. - initially mippin was 100% focused on an application business (Refresh Mobile) but out of every 100 people that downloaded their app only 20 would open and use (they couldn't find apps on their phone!)- not so long ago a lot of people therefore thought that mobile apps were dead RIP Mobile Applications and it was all about mobile web - until iphone appstore came along...- iphone app store not perfect - QA process abysmal, not really a sustainable model? - mippin only getting 100 downloads per week on the app store - need to also look at Ovi etc - however ... fragmentation of appstores and platforms is a problem- Nokia - Java, Symbian, WRT, Flash, Blackberry - Java, iphone - C++, Windows Mobile - .net, Silverlight, Android - Java, Palm - Web OS etc etc- but there is a way around this - use HTML, CSS and Javascript as a common platform and then create a "wrapper" for it - Phone Gap framework can be used for iphone, android, blackberry mobile web apps, WRT for Nokia/ Symbian- this has allowed mippin to quickly and cheaply launch a presence on a range of different appstores and be one of the first services on the likes of Ovi and Blackberry App World - 400% growth in RIM traffic since launch on Blackberry appstore - 21% increase in page views from Nokia handsets since launch on Ovi with a WRT appYou can find mippin in the mjelly directory Related articles by Zemanta Mobile Web 2.0 Summit - Day 1 Review - #mweb09 (mjelly.com)
Mobile Web 2.0 Summit 3rd and 4th June - discount available (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/using-app-stores-to-distribute-your-mobile-service-mippin-mweb09-.html
@jamesparton from O2 gave a short presentation at the Mobile Web Summit about their new developer platform O2 Litmus with some data on how well it is doing so far. Great to see operators sharing more information like this with the community and being open about the performance of new initiatives. Here's the key points I noted down:What is O2 Litmus?- O2 Litmus is a successor to previous O2 developer initiatives such as O2 Source and Revolution - trying to create an environment that encourages experimentation without distracting from the core business - NOT just an appstore - engage customers, allow them to participate, offer early adopters a role to help decide what services O2 should roll out to the mainstream- developers get 5 week payouts not 90 days, 70% revenue share and access to O2 customers in 18 minutes not 18 months How has it done?- O2 Litmus has been live for 4 months- 617 developers have signed up, from 50 countries, with no real PR campaign apart from using social media - 400 apps live on the site - 3000 O2 customers registered (now rolling out a campaign to another 600k customers)- Fring is the top-rated application - events run with developers e.g. to help define product roadmap etc What is next?- being run on an agile basis - 3-6 month roadmap - subscriptions and PC applicaitons- network APIs- more information passed to developers e.g. on devices
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/o2-litmus-developer-network-more-than-an-operator-appstore-mweb09.html
Here's some notes from the Mobile Web Summit from a presentation by Ben Tatton Brown of the mobile ad buying agency Ring Ring Media. Ring Ring are pioneers in bringing the agency model to mobile - buying advertising inventory in scale and using deep analysis and testing to optimize campaigns. I managed to scribble down a few key points from a great presentation that was full of useful data: - Two types of mobile ad campaigns - Performance campaigns and Brand campaigns- Performance campaigns typically £5k to £100k per month, run by mobile content companies etc require a lot of work to setup, in depth targeting, 10 different types of creative, multiple landing pages, line-by-line analytics - Brand campaigns run by the likes of Tesco and Man United are much smaller in scale (£1k to £5k) per month so less interesting for an agency like RIngRing - Buy advertising from a range of different sources including ad networks, portals, search engines- CPM advertising typically costs £2 to £20 (for the really big portals)- CPC from ad networks ranges from 1p to 30p - Search £1 CPC - search converts much more effectively in general but very little supply - Ring Ring try and buy as much of it as possible - Seeing a lot of demand for South African traffic at the moment - it converts well - US traffic is cheap, Indian traffic as low as $0.01 per click- Click through rates and conversations vary depending on the quality of the traffic - Search has a 5-20% click through- Display has a 0.3% to 3% click through (0.3% still higher click thru rate than online)- track everything from CTR, to CPC, Spend, Conversion Rate etc down to the key metric which is CPA e.g. £3 CPA Related articles by Zemanta The rise of mobile ad network aggregators (mjelly.com)
Tesco using click-to-call mobile ads in the UK - mobile advertising going mainstream (mjelly.com)
admob price drop - lower cost mobile inventory (mjelly.com)
Mobile Web 2.0 Summit - Day 1 Review - #mweb09 (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/mobile-advertising-cpms-cpcs-ctrs-and-cpas-.html
Sean Kane from Bebo gave a great presentation at the Mobile Web Summit talking about how mobile is doing as a platform for their web-focused social network both in terms of traffic and usage as well as revenues/ advertising. Mobile is also becoming a key way of extending and developing Bebo now that we are near "the end of the friending boom" e.g. user growth. Here's the key points:Mobile growing very strongly for Bebo - mobile page views up 53% in the last 7 months- SMS up 118% in the last 5 months, 5% of all SMS traffic in Ireland is generated by Bebo - Revenues up 253% (not sure over which period)- 800m + mobile page views per month - 16m SMS sent per month Engagement marketing on mobile working well for Bebo - Get more Luv campaign with Coke - virtual currency in return for inviting users get coke icon on mobile profile - 354k participants, 13% increase in mobile traffic - 562 photo uploads in a single day - took this feature down as too successful and overwhelmed moderators - other forms of advertising not really worthwhile - massive crash in eCPMs in the last 9 months on mobile Related articles by Zemanta Mobile Web 2.0 Summit - Day 1 Review - #mweb09 (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/bebo-mobile-an-online-social-network-succeeding-on-mobile-.html
This week's Carnival of the mobilists is hosted over at Taptu:http://blog.taptu.com/2009/06/01/carnival-of-the-mobilists-176/
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/06/carnival-of-the-mobilists-at-taptu.html
Just done another mobilespace podcast with Peter Glaeser of Sponsormob - this time we cover all the different options available for building mobile sites for fun and profit including:
personal site creation tools like peperonity or winksite
more advanced site builders like mobisitegalore or phn.me
blogging tools like wordpress with mobile plug-ins
RSS to mobile services including mippin, mofuse of mob5
professional platforms like wapple and net biscuits
Anyway - you can download the podcast here http://geekcast.fm/archives/building-a-mobile-site/You can also check out the list of mobile site builders at mjelly.com Related articles by ZemantaNew mobile advertising podcast featuring mjelly (mjelly.com)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/05/how-to-build-a-mobile-site-mobilespace-podcast-.html
The mobile browser software UCWEB has a new English version out. UCWEB is one of the most popular apps on the mjelly.com directory and it just got a lot better. The user-interface has been massively improved and the software is really becoming a fully fledged mobile interface to the web, far more than just a browser, with features like a download manager, file converter, media player, bookmarking and storage. The Chinese company behind the software seem to be taking the international market a lot more seriously and have revamped their English website quite significantly.
Here's some stats - these guys are already major players in mobile:
UCWEB technologies has 210 employees and 140 developers!
the software has been downloaded over 64m times
users are accounting for 10 billion page views per month
user base has grown at 400% p.a. every year over the past three years
Anyway you can read a fuller review of UCWEB over at Mobile Zeitgeist where it is our Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week.
UCWEB download on mjelly (PC)
UCWEB download on mjelly (mobile)
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/05/ucweb-64m-downloads-mobile-20-service-of-the-week-.html
Following on from some recent posts here on mobile internet affiliate marketing and mobile affiliate programs I recently found out about a new mobile internet affiliate network that has recently launched. Mpex is a mobile web affiliate network which links marketers/ affiliates to a huge range of premium content providers and merchants. At the moment the service is mainly plugging in adult content services. However they do have some merchants in other areas including Casino and mobile content (ringtones etc). It's a truism that the adult content sector always leads a lot of technical and business model innovation and this is definitely the case in terms of mobile affiliate marketing. The system MPEX has built is quite simply the most sophisticated mobile affilatiate platform available today. Some of the features include:
Choice of a range of different merchants and content providers
Full microsite builder to create your own sites/ landing pages for the offers
the ability to create your own network of banners on your affilliate site to retain traffic inside your own network
full international support with multiple languages and billing system connections
real time statistics and analytics
I was really impressed with the system these guys have built and the range of merchants available. They are going to be expanding going forward into developing a non-adult front end and a few other things so lots more innovation to come. I really believe this could be on of the first big success stories of mobile affiliate marketing. For anyone currently running mobile ads on their site or experimenting with mobile affiliate programs you have to give this a go. Anyway - check out Mpex and see what it can do.
http://blog.mjelly.com/2009/05/mpex-mobile-web-affiliate-network.html
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