If you’re not from around these parts, you might not know that my day job is working for AdMob, where I’m MD of Europe. I try to keep that from impinging on what I write on MobHappy, but sometimes I think there’s some stuff that you’ll find interesting and today is one such instance.
AdMob served its billionth ad over the weekend, which is a highly satisfying personal milestone. So Ra, Ra and all that.
More importantly though, it highlights some industry trends that are intriguing.
AdMob went live on January 18th 2006 and I heard about it a few weeks later. I blogged about it for the first time in March, comparing it to the new AdWords and I forecast that it had great potential. A few weeks after that, a VC suggested to Omar, the sole founder of AdMob, who had built the site in weekends and evenings while doing an MBA, that we should talk and I started helping out. This led to my being hired as first employee and building AdMob in Europe.
While it’s certainly true that AdMob hit the billion figure last weekend, it also hides the fact that actually, the first six months saw 30 million ads (not bad from a standing start), but our second six months saw a billion ads being sold. And if I was a betting man, I’d suggest that the next billion will take around 3 months.
This spectacular growth is actually indicative of quite a few trends that are happening in the market as a whole:
- Use of the mobile web is exploding generally, despite being held back (in my opinion) by the lack of flat rate data plans in Europe.
- The US is our largest market by page views, despite having a smaller proportion of mobile web users - it’s a function of the overall population size. Here’s the actual stats
1. US 20% (ninety million pageviews/month)
2. South Africa 15% (sixty-six million pageviews/month)
3. India 13% (fifty-seven million pageviews/month)
4. UK 12% (fifty three million pageviews/month)
5. Romania 5% (twenty-two million pageviews/month)
It’s no accident that affordable flat rate data plans are prevalent in the US and S Africa.
- Like any web sites, a mobile web site is accessible from everywhere. Therefore, it’s worth noting that while pages are served all over the globe, most of the traffic actually comes from European web sites - I don’t think that we have any S African sites, for instance, despite being a huge market for mobile web consumption.
- We categorise the sites we work with into “channels”, so that advertisers can better understand where their ads will appear. In case it’s not clear, the sites where our advertising appears are independently owned, off-portal (for the moment) sites. We arrange to serve ads in return for a revenue share.
The channels split down in terms of traffic into
1. Communities 45 %
2. Downloads 44%
3. Portals 8%
4. Entertainment 2%
5. News and Information 1%
This is somewhat counter-intuitive as I would have assumed that news, as an example, would be pretty big for mobile. But then, it could be a function of the types of sites in our network. The BBC, as an example, has a significant mobile web presence globally and we can’t work with them as their Charter precludes it.
- Communities is the largest channel though and that’s a function of another major trend - MugCon, or Mobile User Generated Content. It’s already huge and about to get stratospheric.
Good news for Nokia! In terms of what handsets most people using the mobile web have, Nokia wins hands down.
1. Nokia 41%
2. Motorola 14%
3. Sony-Ericsson 13%
4. Samsung 12%
5. LG 3%
This is completly out of kilter with market share and I don’t know exactly why this would be. I have a couple of theories though, as you might expect. Maybe, it’s a personal prejudice, but I find Nokia much better in terms of usability to use the mobile web and in particular, my E61 is a delight (Declaration of interest: unlike Carlo, I paid for mine!). So this phenomenon could be that users of the mobile web choose Nokia. Dunno, anyone else have ideas on this?
- Mobile marketing is a very hot space and it’s going to get even bigger now.
- If you are a brand and you’re considering building a mobile web site, get with the programme. Accessing the mobile web is no longer a niche for geeks. It’s mainstream and about to tip.
Here’s to 10 Billion!
Congratulations Russ! Very interesting figure breakdown as well. Its a very similar pattern we are seeing with Opera Mini, where South Africa ranks pretty high (after US of course.) Probably has a lot to do with cheap data plans, as you suggest. I remember reading a review where the journalist said he was happy to see that his active use of the Opera Mini browser was only the equivalent of sending a couple of SMS messages when he got his bill at the end of the month.
Congrats Russell! Very interesting post too.
Fantastic news, congratulations! We’ve used AbMob for a while on our site now and it’s sweet. Much respect to the team for putting it together and making it such a success!
It would be nice for me to be able to refer other mobile site owners to it and get a little kickback on what they spend or earn. I tell people it’s great anyway.
Your figures there for handset usage are very different from ours:
1 SONYERICSSONK800I
2 SAMSUNG-SGH-D500
3 SAMSUNG-SGH-D600
4 SEC-SGHE900
5 SONYERICSSONW810I
6 SAMSUNG-SGH-D900
7 SAMSUNG-SGH-E370
8 SONYERICSSONK750I
9 SAMSUNG-SGH-D600E
10 SONYERICSSONW810I
That’s based on orders from the last 30 days - I’ve surprised / concerned to not see Nokia or Motorola in our top 10.
[...] They’re not just pretty faces over at AdMob. Have a read of Russell’s break down here. It’s rather stimulating information and gives a super insight into just what markets are moving in terms of mobile web browsing. [...]
Congratulations AdMob ! A very impressive growth rate. I have been saying 2007 is the year of mAd. Looks like you are on a big winner….
Tomi Ahonen
[...] Now, for the real post. I popped over to Mobhappy today just to see what I’ve been missing since I haven’t stopped by in a while. Looks like AdMob hit their 1 billionth mobile ad. That’s great, but the real story, and more importantly, they shared some of their statistics and guess who their number one phone company was. That’s right, it was Nokia with a crushing lead. But are you really surprised. Here’s the numbers. [...]
Congragulations ! on the great feat achieved. !
The number from India surprises me the most, I co-ordinate the bangalore chapter of MoMo and I track the mobile space in India quite religiosly. I have spoken to a lot and lot of people and I find that most people never use GPRS. But looks like I am certainly well informed the real happenings.
Rajan
Well done Admob !
Very interesting post and I’m getting a strong sense of deja vu in terms of what happened during the development of online advertising/marketing.
Well done Admob !
Very interesting post and I’m getting a strong sense of deja vu in terms of what happened during the development of online advertising/marketing.
i’m surprised that romania is the 5th largest demographic. surely that’s not representative of worldwide mobile content use? is there a significant skew due to the sites that admob partners with? how interesting are romanian consumers to most advertisers?
Thanks to everyone for the kind words.
Charles, the AdMob platform allows advertisers to target by country (and handset make and capability). So the question about attractiveness of Romanians, isn’t really that important. However, based on our stats, many advertisers are choosing to address the Romanian market, though by no means all.
The same thing applies about possible skew of the type of sites that we partner with. We’re really not claiming to be representative of the whole market, although we’re not actively targeting specific segments. If anything though, the bias would be towards English language sites.
However, the stats we can churn out are based on a lot of page views and while operators continue to be cagey about disclosing their usage stats, AdMob can probably provide the most accurate glimpse of mobile web usage available. It’s not perfect, but most would accept that the insight is better than no insight at all.
Russell
[...] Russell Buckley finally posted his long awaited Carnival of the Mobilists Post of the Year nominations. He has been extremely busy lately counting the ads coming in at AdMob, undoubtly one of ‘the’ mobile succes stories from last year. Next to that Russell says it was a really, really hard post to write: “I’ve been chopping and changing things for a month now and it’s finally time to get it posted before we embark on 3GSM madness.” And more: As you (hopefully) know, the Carnival of the Mobilists is a weekly celebration of the best writing about mobile from around the world. This post brings you the best writing of the year and is therefore definitely worth reading in full and voting on your favourite one. Voting details at the end, but please don’t forget to vote. [...]