In brief: An open and outspoken podcast interview with Ray Anderson, Bango CEO, provides how-to advice on app promotion and distribution and outlines how developers can (should) maximize revenues by measuring real results. Also: a frank discussion of app stores dynamics and why developers – not app stores – have the responsibility (and an interest) to market their apps.
The recent raft of recent stats and forecasts on smartphone sales and shipments confirm a buoyant outlook for devices and app downloads. Gartner, for example, reckons downloads could reach 4 billion this year alone, and rise to a whopping 21 billion by 2013.
Editor's note: This provocative guest column from Andy Bovingdon, Bango VP Product Marketing, takes a hard look at the critical questions publishers, developers and advertisers need to ask themselves as they architect truly effective mobile strategies. Should the Apple iPad, just now coming to Europe, be considered a mobile device (and therefore take a central role in mobile strategy)? Or do other factors beyond technology play a deciding role?
In the run up to launch of the iconic iPad device it's no wonder that the topic has come up in several recent mobile marketing meetings with clients and colleagues alike. The emotional bond – even obsession – with this device is understandable. But the need for hard-nosed business realism (particularly if you are a publisher or marketer aiming to delight your particular customer base or target demographic) is much greater.
This is the first of a series of post in which we’ll review mobile advertising and search networks to give you a heads up on what you are going to find when you decide to run a mobile advertising or mobile search marketing campaign. We’ll review the same points in all of them, so you can quickly get an overview on how much effort and money you have to put in.
Can I set up my campaign online? Yes
How long does it take to set up? Less than 10 minutes.
Payment options: Credit and debit cards, but not those with chip and pin security
Minimum payment: There is no minimum; it will depend on how your campaign performs
Bidding options: CPC, with either a monthly budget or a daily budget so you can adjust for heavier traffic during a promotion.
In recognition of the increasing importance of permission advertising and getting people to opt-in to campaigns (as a means to really measure conversions) Maria Sanchez provides us some helpful tips to get the most (accurary) out of our mobile campaigns using her Mobislim mobile website. More about her Mobislim blog and campaign road tests here.
At the end of January I was interested to see that Bango reported 83% of brands don’t use mobile specific analytics tools, leading to inaccurate data on campaign performance. But even more surprising, 27% of brands don’t measure at all! I know it would make life easier if you didn’t have to report on the performance of your mobile marketing campaigns, but surely real marketers would like to know?
Not wanting to know conversion rates or what to do to improve them seems a bit crazy to me?! The good news is it’s actually quite easy to accurately measure your mobile campaign conversions and best of all you can see the results a in couple of clicks.
BlackBerry retains #1 position on mobile browsing leader board
Bango – the mobile payments and analytics specialist – reports a 600% growth in traffic to mobile websites. The company analyzed traffic to a range of mobile sites over the last 12 months. Data was gathered by sampling across 50 million phone users worldwide who have accessed third party mobile sites through its platform.
The key findings from Bango’s annual mobile usage study record 6 times the number of visits to mobile websites, comparing December 2009 with the same month a year earlier. The average time on site is measured as 3 minutes, 21 seconds, averaged across user visits to all sites, compared with just over one and half minutes the previous year. The analysis also measured the average number of pages viewed per visit at 5 pages, up from just over 2 pages per visit twelve months before.
With the intense coverage that mobile applications continue to attract, the content developers are already starting to investigate alternative distribution channels to the App "Stores" themselves. In the rush to follow the now crowded mobile apps market, developers are starting to realise that after all their efforts to build a mobile app, to get noticed and survive they need to look beyond the app store.
Distribution is no longer about being in the top 10 – almost impossible amongst such fierce competition and undocumented selection methods by store managers. It is now about maximizing distribution and revenues. This is precisely what a recent survey by Bango uncovered. Bango surveyed over 400 developers and content providers in the USA and Europe, and the results revealed:
