A billion ads on mobile at Admob

I mean phew, just think about it. The scale is mindblowing.

Russell Buckley MD for Admob blogs in Admob hits 1 billion

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 is jaw droppingly amazing. So come on media houses brands and agencies, the future is mobile, not those 30sec interruptive spots, that no-one watches anyway, yet you continue to pour your cash away.

Russell explains the way it works

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%

Naturaly for Tomi and I we are pleased to see communities at the top of the list :-)

And its not stopping there

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 - says Russell

And finally good news for Nokia

n 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?

Where abouts on the hockey stick curve are we Russell?

Mobile marketing is a very hot space and it’s going to get even bigger now.

So some advice from a wise sage

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! blockquote>

The future's bright the futures mobile

Comments

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[ノースフェイス]

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