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Tag Archive for Apple

Opportunities and Challenges in a Fragmented Mobile Landscape

This is the first in a series of posts walking readers through the mobile advertising space. Stay tuned for more posts over the coming weeks. This is also posted on the Rubicon Project blog.

Fragmented Mobile

Fixing Mobile

Everyone recognizes that mobile advertising is a rapidly growing market. How fast is it growing? eMarketer has current year revenue estimates at $3.9 Billion. According to the Yankee Group mobile ad sales should nearly triple by 2016 to $10 Billion.  I think this estimate is low given the acceleration in market growth we’ve experienced so far this year alone. Revised eMarketer numbers now indicate nearly 100% growth for 2012 over 2011.  Further, eMarketer predicts that mobile will grow to over $23 Billion by 2016. This is much more consistent with Mary Meeker’s prediction of a $20 Billion mobile market.

Given this tremendous market opportunity, we have seen first-hand that numerous publishers are moving to mobile – building mobile applications, optimizing their web content and trying to figure out how to turn that mobile content into a dependable revenue stream. We are glad publishers are jumping in and are excited to be in the mobile space as well. However, we have also witnessed headwinds in this developing market and would like to use this blog to help publishers address these challenges.

The mobile display advertising space has some distinct challenges that fly in the face of the status quo of online display. These challenges conspire to make it more difficult for publishers to advertise across their mobile inventory. A primary complication is that there are three major operating systems (plus Blackberry), each with subtle differences that require research and technology to overcome. Let’s explore how each of these platforms differ.

Apple’s iPhones do not support Flash and ship with third party cookies disabled by default. The lack of Flash strongly affects the user experience and the ability to deliver Flash-based rich media creatives that render in online display (troublesome on iPad, where standard display ads are typically viewed with little loss of fidelity relative to their online counterparts). Additionally, the lack of third party cookies makes it difficult to perform simple audience targeting that we’ve grown accustomed to.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform is touted as having twice as much HTML 5 support, but still lags behind Chrome (Android), Safari (iOS) and even Blackberry.  We are hopeful that Windows Phone 8 will support HTML 5 to the point that publishers and advertisers can leverage the same mobile web ads across platforms.  However, there is a possibility that a lack of full HTML 5 support will require custom ad units for this platform. On top of that, Windows Phone 8 may also ship with the new Do Not Track (DNT) flag turned on, severely limiting the ability for publishers to achieve higher rates through traditional tracking and targeting.

Google’s Android platform seems to be the most compliant to the needs of the industry.  Android supports 3rd party cookies, DNT is disabled by default, device IDs are available in the app environment and it even supports Flash.  Of course this all supports Google’s advertising business, but they’re nice enough to keep the platform open for a variety of complementary and competitive third parties. By creating an environment most closely resembling online display, Google has made it easier for publishers to incorporate Android to their mobile experiences.

Where does all of this fragmentation leave us? Many publishers have been successful in traversing this fragmented market. If you are new to mobile, it can be daunting to figure out where to start. A logical starting point is to figure out what mobile devices are most common among your audience and focus on building your mobile presence there (at least initially). That way you limit the number of challenges you have to deal with. Eventually you will have to accommodate users across a variety of devices and platforms, so working with a partner that is platform-agnostic is critical. Look for partners that have a history of ad serving across platforms and formats.

In this series of posts, I hope to help provide some insights to help publishers that are still trying to make sense of the market. What challenges do you face in mobile? What specifically would you like insight and tips on? Comment below and I’ll incorporate into the subsequent posts.

A small case for the iPhone nano

Apple has several sizes and shapes in their line of computers and iPods, but only one size and shape to their phone. Sure, you can get 3G or 3GS with a variety of storage onboard, but the device itself comes with the same processor, same graphics, same screen size, same camera, same ins and outs.

This same-ness has eased developer adoption to be sure. Having a single device to design for means there’s one stream of code, with some tinkering for backward compatibility. It’s also great for the accessory folks. A single physical shape means more consumers available per accessory.

There might be a problem with such a robust device running the iPhone OS. Folks who’ve purchased an iPad might not need the next iPhone. The iPad runs almost all the apps that the iPhone runs, and with the larger screen the apps are often far better. Owning an iPad means that users, like myself, could actually get by with a cheaper, run-of-the-mill mobile phone. Read more

GoogleTV, AppleTV, Tivo: Listen up

Tivo, you had it right. You were in the right place with a near perfect device. You were missing a DVD player and the Internet, but that’s about it. Honestly, you had me sold.

Apple, you’re making progress. You’ve got some of the Internet, all of my music and you almost negate the need for a DVD player. Let me back up a tic, none of you need a Blu-Ray player. The format may have won but I don’t have racks of Blu-Ray disks on my shelf, I’ve got DVDs.

Google, Sling, DLink (ha!), you’re not there either. None of you are, none of you will be until you get all these things right. Ready? Here we go.

The perfect device for my TV will do all of the following:

  • Replace my cable or satellite box
  • Play my DVDs and maybe my Blu-Ray disks
  • Have a web browser and support all web formats (yeah, even Flash Mr. Jobs)
  • Have a smart device (phone, tablet) as the remote
  • Sync with my music and movies on my computer
  • Have all DVR functionality
  • Allow me to copy my shows onto my computer or smart device (and maybe even let me pull the content remotely like Sling)

Read more

Hewlett-Packard and Palm could be a contender

HPalm LogoYesterday HP announced that it was going to buy Palm for $1.2 billion (HPalm?). I think it’s a stroke of genius. The more I dig into this plan the better both companies look to benefit from it. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome, but if they can execute on some key opportunities they could be perfectly positioned to give Apple a run for the money. It’s not rocket science to see the potential here or to come up with even a modest plan to give them a good shot. Early indications are that HP will leverage sales and market reach to push Palm devices into the market. I hope that’s not the end of the plan. It might yield a quick buck but there’s so much more they can do.

HP can learn a lot from Palm. The Palm Pilot was as ubiquitous as the iPhone at one time. You kids might not remember this, but there was eventually something that looked like an App Store (see: handango.com), versions of the Palm eventually supported peripherals (see: Handspring) and there was even a phone version (see: Treo 600). Today it seems absurd that you’d have a mobile device that wasn’t a phone (or would you? iPad), but back in the late 90’s and early 00’s it was pretty normal. Today Palm sells only a couple of devices. The differentiating factor is whether or not it has a physical keyboard. It’s a perfect line-up, but without the marketing bucks to compete against the big Apple Palm was struggling. But they’ve got the right products: smartphones, and the right number of them: 2. Read more

In defense of closed systems

Apple is on the receiving end of a lot of grief over the defensive wall around the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Many developers are vocally critical of the rules governing how apps are approved and which technologies are selectively excluded. Most notably, Adobe‘s Flash technology has been very publicly rejected by Steve Jobs. Some contend that this is a calculated business move by Apple that ensures control over applications that run on the iDevices. Others tow the party line by sighting the battery drain or buggy nature that sometimes accompanies Flash. However people would like to split the minutia, the overarching theme is that Apple wants to maintain control over the user experience.

Facebook on the iPhoneClosed systems like this have several benefits. Software can be vetted by experts before it gets into the market: blocking confusing functionality, managing the user’s exposure to risk, protecting the devices from viruses and ensuring a high quality application pool. No one really complained too loudly about Apple’s closed systems when it comes to hardware accessories. But there you see other benefits more clearly like device compatibility, quality control and even price in some cases.

Ignoring the consumer benefits of closed system, many developers see them as a way for companies like Apple to make more money. Selling a program in the iTunes App Store requires that application programmers to pay Apple a portion of their revenue and if an application duplicates functionality of a built-in app it’s likely to be rejected by Apple outright. Not every closed system draws ire from the programming community.

Another high-profile closed system is found in Facebook‘s messaging system. While they’ve opened up their chat to programs like Trillian, but their system that most closely resembles email remains closed. Users of regular email cannot get messages in, but Facebook’s system does send a copy of messages sent out to recipient’s email accounts. This has the clear benefit of reducing spam, but you don’t hear email marketers making too much noise about it. They are not well loved and their complaints about how they can’t send messages into everyone’s favorite social network will likely fall on deaf ears. Read more