A fresh new year with the conference and rumour seasons already in full swing, 2010 promises to becoming an exciting one for all things mobile. So let’s be kicking off another Carnival of the Mobilists (it is carnival season, too, after all). What do we have this week?
Russell Buckley looks at the benefits but also disadvantages of a retail experience online, on mobile and on the high street. He looks at this from the perspective of search vs discovery and, alas, the mobile being, well, mobile, he predicts some impact. Suffice to say, it involves the renaissance of the (much beloved by me) local bookstore! Russell’s post is here.
Mark Jaffe has an almost lyrical contribution musing about “monetizing passion” (and he is quick to point out that, despite the closeness to that other show in Las Vegas last week, he is not talking about adult entertainment). It is an intriguing angle on a well-covered topic: he basically posits that the ability to digitally provide the immediacy of satisfying passion presents one of the greatest marketing opportunities around. I concur! His post is here.
WIP Jam contributes a very insightful guest post by Informa Principal Analyst Malik Saadi who suggests that the fragmented smartphonosphere (great word!) and resultant increasing costs of native development will provide a lever for the mobile web, and he reasons it well! He reckons that the low latency of next-generation networks (LTE et al) will make the web the new ubiquitous platform for app development. If the battery life of the devices holds up, I might add… Malik’s post is here.
The good folks at mobiThinking have a great overview of available mobile metrics reports from the various ad networks, and all of them in one place. A fantastic resource! Their write-up is here.
And, finally, Aviv Revach looks forward to the Mobile World Congress and the second most important thing (after actually finding a place to sit down for your meetings) and is assembling a compilation of networking events (and, well, yes, parties) in Barcelona. Make sure to check in on his post (which he will update) here.
Which concludes this week’s Carnival. Now get back to your work and if you are attending the Mobile Games Forum or the conference that starts the mobile build-up to this summer’s FIFA World Cup, namely M-Football (both in London), make sure to connect; I’ll be at both.
Image credit: http://cbertel.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/carnival-masks-2.jpg
It was an eventful week but I shall pick
From Google’s and Admob’s respective business perspectives, it appears to make eminent sense, too (and I am not privy to their numbers): Admob will be able to bulk up and cement its leadership position in the segment. Its inventory and back-end ad management will be able to dip into Google’s vast resources, which is great for them. Google probably realized that Admob’s strength meant that they would be difficult to beat. And who you can’t beat, you shall join (or, in Google’s case, buy) them. For Google, it is a smart move as it gives them critical mass in an ad format where they have not nearly been as dominant as for other formats and gives them access to a lot of eyeballs.





Fishlabs produced an iPhone game for this (aptly called “Waterslide Extreme”). Interestingly, other than a Barclaycard logo on the main menu screen, I could not (yet) find any mention of the brand. Anyhow, Barclaycard seems to be super-happy as Fishlabs now has reported a whopping 2m downloads in one (!) week, which have generated 16m “engagement minutes”, presumably meaning that players engaged with the brand.
I have just been killing time and played a game on my iPhone. A free one. One with little ads at the bottom, mainly asking you to download all sorts of apps and games. Powered by
Does anyone really think that this will work? And, moreover: what are ad “impressions” really worth when they only quite literally display, well, random stuff rather than ads people can also understand (for those unaware: being able to say “merci” with an even remotely foreign-sounding accent is considered a major linguistic accomplishment in this country)? In this context, AdMob’s
Mobile advertising firm 







