We are excited today to announce the launch of the open source versions of the AdWhirl iPhone SDK and AdWhirl Server.  Our primary goal with this launch is to maintain the ease-of-use to which AdWhirl users have become accustomed, while giving developers increased transparency and flexibility in meeting their mobile ad network mediation needs.  Developers actively using AdWhirl don’t need to do anything. We have designed this new open source version so they don’t have to make any changes.

The new open AdWhirl iPhone SDK allows developers to include only the code for ad networks that they actually use, an advantage for developers concerned with the size of their apps.  But we’ve also designed the open AdWhirl iPhone SDK to make it easy for developers to add new mobile ad networks that aren’t explicitly supported in the current version.  The open AdWhirl team will be actively encouraging developers to submit those additions as patches so that the entire community can benefit.  We are also actively encouraging mobile ad network participation in the future development of AdWhirl and hope to build an engaged and diverse community of committers to the project.  More details on exactly how we will be accepting patches and expanding the community of committers will be coming soon.

The AdWhirl Server, the piece of infrastructure that allows you to configure how ads are served in your app and that allows you to monitor the performance of advertising from all of the mobile networks that you’re using, has been redesigned from the ground up to be both open, and easy for developers to host.  The AdWhirl server runs on Amazon Web Services EC2 and employs SimpleDB for persistent data storage.  As part of today’s launch we’re providing both source code and EC2 disk images in order to make it as easy as possible for developers to run their own AdWhirl Server.  The new server design and the use of Amazon Web Services should also make it easy for folks running their own AdWhirl server to operate at significant scale.

As proof of this latter point, we’ll be transitioning the AdWhirl server located at adwhirl.com to Amazon Web Services and to the new open AdWhirl code base shortly.  We will continue to provide this as a free service to AdWhirl users who don’t need or want to operate their own AdWhirl server.  We’ll be communicating soon with developers on the specifics of this transition.  We are fully committed to minimizing any impact that this transition might have on AdWhirl users.

Both the iPhone SDK and Server source code and documentation are now available for download on Google code under the Apache Software Foundation license.  We would love to hear your feedback and questions at support@adwhirl.com or through our AdWhirl forum on Google Groups.

Kevin
Engineering

AdMob constantly analyzes data across our network to find ways to improve performance for our advertisers and publishers.  These ongoing analyses examine many aspects of our network such as: advertiser bids, competition, the type of sites or apps in which ads are served, and value of a click to advertisers.

If our data shows that a click from a specific publisher site or application is significantly less likely to accomplish an advertiser’s business objective (ie. driving a download), we may reduce the flow of ads to that publisher. This shift in allocation is performed in an effort to both reward publishers that provide us with high quality, valuable clicks, as well as maximize performance for our advertisers.

While some factors that impact traffic performance are outside of a developer’s control, there are many that developers do have control over. One of the most important contributors to click performance is implementation style. Because of this, we strongly encourage our application developers to take these best practices into consideration:

• Ads should not be placed very close to or underneath buttons or any other object which users may accidentally click while interacting with your application.
• Ads should not be placed in a location that covers up or hides any area that users have interest in viewing.
• Ads should not be placed in areas where users will randomly click or place their fingers on the screen. In these cases we recommend implementing our ads on a title or ending page.
• Ads should not be placed on a “dead end” screen. There must be a way to exit a screen without clicking the ad (ex, a “back” or “menu” button). Otherwise, the user should be notified that the home button will exit the application.
• Ads should not be refreshed more than once every 60 seconds.
• Ads should not be pre-cached, cached, or stored in any fashion. All ads should be requested dynamically and refreshed when the page is refreshed.
• Click through URLs should not be proxied. All publishers should pass AdMob’s click through URL to the client exactly as it is returned by AdMob.
• The number of ads on a single page should not exceed 1 if the ad is fixed to the screen top or screen bottom.  If the page scrolls, then there should be a maximum of 1 ad on the top and 1 ad on the bottom, and both ads should not appear on the same page.

While these guidelines can significantly increase traffic quality, not all developers who follow these best practice guidelines will raise click performance high enough to regain ad flow.

We understand that these optimizations cause some of our publishers to earn less as their fill is reduced. However, we believe that these changes will ultimately lead to both higher payouts for publishers that provide high quality inventory, and significant increases in advertiser performance.

Bryan
Product

It has been six weeks since we launched Download Exchange, our service that allows developers to increase consumer awareness and drive downloads of their iPhone app.  When developers join AdMob’s iPhone Download Exchange they allocate a portion of their ad inventory to the exchange and in return their app is promoted across other iPhone apps in the AdMob network.

We are excited that a majority of our publishers are now taking advantage of the exchange and that it has delivered great results so far. Here are some highlights:
•    >700 apps participating
•    >563,000 downloads driven by the exchange
•    15 apps generated more than 10,000 downloads each
•    Average click through rate of an exchange ad is 0.7%
•    Average conversion rate from click to download is 13%

Despite this strong start, we continue to optimize the exchange to maximize its effectiveness and fairness for all of our publishers. We have made several significant improvements to the Download Exchange algorithm already.  We appreciate the all the feedback we’ve received and will add additional features to Download Exchange in the future – so stay tuned.

For more details on the exchange or how to get started if you are an AdMob publisher/developer, please visit http://www.admob.com/exchange/.

Publishers with questions should visit our previous blog post for more details or drop us a line at support@admob.com.  As a reminder, if you set the Ad Preference Slider all the way toward “more paid ads”, we will show a paid ad in your app whenever one is available.

Mike F.
Product Marketing

What do you use on your mobile device? Internet sites designed for the PC screen or mobile Web sites?

It’s one of the big questions in mobile today and a topic that Matt Marshall of VentureBeat just tackled in a column comparing the mobile strategies of Google and Apple. Both Google and Apple, as well as AdMob, obviously have a vested interest in the outcome. But we believe that the decision won’t be made by any one company, instead will be made by consumers and they are voting with their fingertips.

The distinct and real differences in both mobile technology and how consumers use it require distinctly different user experiences. More advanced devices like iPhone and Android have come up with innovative ways to enable consumers to view full HTML Web sites on their phones.  But just because they can, does not mean they are. We are seeing an increasing number of publishers create unique mobile experiences, both mobile Web sites and mobile applications, for consumers. And they are seeing much higher engagement rates from consumers on mobile devices through their mobile sites and applications than on their HTML sites.

A great example of this is mobile Web site and application that CBS Sports created. The above left image shows what their HTML site looks like on an iPhone, the middle image is of their mobile Web site and the right is of their iPhone application. In Matt Marshall’s column he quotes CBS as saying they are getting “five to ten times” the level of engagement by users in their iPhone application. Consumers are flocking to the best user experience.

Today mobile devices, even though they are not as big or powerful as the average PC, give consumers the ability to accomplish all but the most work-specific tasks such as creating a presentation or spreadsheet. This is thanks in large part to Apple, but also to Google, RIM, and other device manufacturers who are investing heavily in scalable Web service and application frameworks for their mobile device Operating Systems (OSs).

Some of the elements of the existing Web will give consumers the sufficiently high quality experience they are looking for on mobile, search being a good example. But the differences in the technical capabilities of a mobile device as compared to a PC are real. This includes the obvious elements such as the size of the device screen and keys, the connection speed, and user interface as well as the software they support. One prime example is Flash.  While Flash is very commonly used on sites designed for the PC Internet it does not work, either natively or within the browsers, on most mobile phones.

The other real element is how consumers use and interact with their mobile devices. At AdMob, we’ve discovered that users, in general, are looking for a specific piece of information or to entertain themselves by killing a few minutes when they’re on their mobile device. There is also the real fact that most consumers won’t spend time filling out forms on mobile, while it’s very common on the PC Web.  That modality is quite different than the one that I observed in previous lives as a product manager working on desktop-oriented web products, and my belief is that distinction in modalities will actually grow over time, even if mobile devices become more powerful and PC-like in other respects.

Take a quick walk down memory lane, and there are other trends that have followed similar patterns. The iPod is a great example.  While it came late to the digital music scene, the power that its mobility and convenience provided ended up dominating how not only music, but also video, is now consumed both on mobile devices and, eventually, the desktop.  It’s an exciting evolutionary marker of what may be to come on mobile devices, as well as the influence mobile devices will have on our desktop experience.  And I personally feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to witness and participate in such a seismic period in our technology history.

Ali
VP of Product Management

There are a lot of variables for an advertiser to consider when setting up and later evaluating the success of their mobile ad campaign.  We’ve previously published best practices and optimization tips for all advertisers and tips specifically for iPhone advertisers, however we know that managing an effective campaign is an art and a science.  As such we wanted to share a few of the mistakes we’ve seen advertisers make to help you avoid these common pitfalls.

• Not including branding or a call to action in ad copy. Users who know who you are and what they will need to do once they click on your ad are much more likely to click and then convert into customers.

• Not changing ad text frequently. Just like you’re more likely to skip through a commercial that you’ve already seen, users are more likely to ignore your ad if the copy is stale.  We recommend closely monitoring reporting and testing changes to your ad text if you see click-through-rates decline.

• Too few ads. We have found that advertisers who have multiple ads running see higher click-through-rates than those with fewer ads. We recommend starting with a minimum of three to five ads (more is better!) to increase your visibility and allow you to experiment with ad performance levers (e.g., targeting parameters, ad copy, etc).  Monitor the results each ad is driving, adjust your bids to favor those higher performing ads, and tweak your lower performing ads based upon what you’ve learned.

• Not carefully selecting targeting. Advertisers who do not select targeting with their goals in mind may not drive the results they need from their campaign. To ensure that your ads are shown to the right users, we need you to tell us a little bit about who you’re hoping to reach as you create your ad.  For example, is it important that you reach only users in a certain geographic region?  Or only users on a specific device?  Or are you trying to reach as many users as possible for the lowest price possible?  Be sure to carefully consider the targeting options available when creating your ads and select those most appropriate for your campaign objectives.  Keep in mind that broader targeting selections will result in more traffic and more specific selections will result in less volume but higher qualified traffic.

• Not optimizing ads. Not optimizing your ads during a campaign may mean missed opportunities for maximized performance.  Even the best ad may see varied performance over time as competition for desired inventory increases, ad copy grows stale, etc.  We recommend actively monitoring ad performance using the reports available in the “Custom” tab of Reporting at admob.com.  This will allow you to determine which ads are performing best, highlight changes in your ads’ performance and identify opportunities to optimize performance by testing levers such as ad text, targeting or bid amount.  As you evaluate different ad text, targeting and bid amounts, you can easily track effectiveness of each by adding a unique ID onto the URL of your landing page for each ad.  For example, if the URL for your landing page is http://www.admob.com/advertise you can add a unique ID in order to identify traffic from a specific ad such as http://www.admob.com/advertise?ad1

• Landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile. Sending traffic to your regular website will lead to a less than optimal experience for mobile visitors.  To maximize conversions, you should ensure that your ads are sending mobile traffic, even from the iPhone, to a landing page created and optimized specifically for mobile.  Make sure that your ads and landing page are consistent to reduce user confusion and decrease bounce rates.  Finally ensure that the placement of your call to action, product, or service being promoted is easy to locate on the landing page.  You may even consider including your call to action multiple times (e.g., both above and below the fold).

Don’t let this list of common mistakes give you pause; advertising with AdMob is easy and can be a very cost effective way to drive traffic to your mobile site and acquire new users.  Taking into consideration the suggestions offered above will help you make your campaigns even more successful.

If you have questions or need help along the way, feel free to contact our experts at support@admob.com.

Wendy
Product Marketing