We are excited to announce our first AdMob Developer Day for Thursday, March 25^th in San Mateo.  The event will be open to all mobile developers and those interested in the industry and will start at 1pm in the afternoon. We think we’ve put together a great agenda that will help developers more effectively use mobile advertising to drive their business.

If you can make it, please RSVP via the AdMob Meetup group so we can properly prepare for the event.

In the early afternoon sessions we’ll cover topics including:

• Developer Tips: Ad Placement and Best Practices
• Introduction to the AdWhirl Open Source Mediation Layer
• New AdMob Publisher Tools and Features
• Promoting Your App: Utilizing House Ads and Developer Case Study
• Developer Discussion on the iPad
• Pros and cons of developing for different platforms

At 7pm we’re going to have an interactive Q&A session with our founder, Omar Hamoui, and a panel of industry experts talking about what’s next with app monetization, discovery, and the development of various mobile platforms. Confirmed panelists include:

• Matt Murphy, Partner at KPCB and manages the iFund
• Jonathan Goldberg, Industry Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Rich Wong,  Partner at Accel Partners and AdMob board member
• Matt Marshall, Editor of VentureBeat

We’re fielding a brief anonymous survey and will share the results with everyone during the Developer Day. We appreciate your input and ask that you take a few minutes to respond.

A detailed agenda will be available in the coming days so you can choose the sessions you are most interested in.  For those who can’t make the event, we will post as much content online as possible afterwards.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Mike F
Marketing

BATTLE BEARS is an award winning iPhone game developed by SkyVu Pictures. After releasing a big update, SkyVu Pictures wanted to drive downloads and improve rankings for both versions of the game. Their goal was to push BATTLE BEARS Free into the Top 100 Overall Free Apps and Top 50 Free Games in the App Store. SkyVu partnered with AdMob to run CPC text ads for two days on the iPod Touch platform reaching an audience of zealous mobile gamers.

BATTLE BEARS ad on Flixster app in the AdMob network linking to the BATTLE BEARS download page

Results:

• Daily Free App download volume increased by 1000%
• Daily Paid App download volume increased by 300%
• Overall free app ranking improved from <150 to #59
• Overall paid app ranking improved from #102 to #29
• Games category free ranking improved from #147 to #31
• Games category paid ranking improved from #64 to #14
• Paid App reached #82 in Overall Top Grossing app list

To read the full BATTLE BEARS case study, please click here.

To read coverage of this case study in Mobile Marketer, click here.

Johanna W
Marketing

The game developer Ubisoft wanted to promote the launch of their new console game Assassin’s Creed II as well as drive downloads of the game’s iPhone app.  Ubisoft was specifically searching for a way to innovatively engage with mobile users and to create continued interest in its game.

Taking advantage of AdMob’s range of mobile advertising solutions, Ubisoft developed a holistic mobile marketing campaign that integrated AdMob’s new Interactive Video Ad format for iPhone with text and banner ads that ran across platforms to maximize reach.  The ads led users to several mobile destinations including the iPhone App store where they could immediately download the game app, the Amazon.com mobile website where they could directly purchase the console game and the Assassin’s Creed II mobile website.

Assassin’s Creed II Click-to-Play Interactive Video Ad for iPhone

AdMob also facilitated a sponsorship between Ubisoft and AdMob’s exclusive publisher partner TapTapRevenge resulting in prominent placement of the Assassin’s Creed II brand in the TapTapRevenge game interface.

Assassin’s Creed II sponsorship of the TapTapRevenge iPhone App in the AdMob network

The campaign generated impressive results with AdMob’s ads driving over 172,000 users to the Assassin’s Creed II mobile experience and resulting in 3 page views per visitor to the game’s mobile site.

For more information about Ubisoft’s mobile campaign, please download the full case study.

Great story about this case study in Forbes, to read the article click here.

Johanna W.

Marketing

Please join us this Wednesday at GDC for an educational session on ‘Promoting and Monetizing Your App: Finding Success in Mobile.’ This session is part of the iPhone Summit and Gamesbeat.

AdMob Senior Director of Sales Brendon Kraham and iPhone & Android Business Development Manager Charles Yim will share examples of gaming apps that have created effective business models. Brendon will share examples of game apps that have successfully used advertising to drive app downloads and boost app rankings. Charles will discuss tips for earning revenue from mobile traffic.

Later in the day be sure to stop by ‘A Sea of Mobile Devices,’ a panel discussion at Gamesbeat where Director of Business Development Aunkur Arya will share his thoughts on the changing landscape and monetization opportunities of mobile gaming.

Session time and location information is as follows:

Promoting and Monetizing Your App: Finding Success in Mobile
Date: March 10, 2010
Time: 11:15am – 12:15am
Location: Room 112, Moscone Center North Hall

A Sea of Mobile Devices
Date: March 10, 2010
Time: 4:30pm – 5:15pm
Location: Room 305, Moscone Center South Hall

Afterwards, please drop by our table in Room 303 in Moscone Center South Hall to learn more about mobile advertising and to get started with AdMob.

See you there!

Johanna W.
Marketing

I just read Rich Wong’s article in TechCrunch today and as usual, he had a great perspective.  I love the “deal with it” perspective and think that’s the key.

The mobile industry has established that the value is there in terms of audience, spending power, engagement and trackable actions.  The ROI is there on an investment in content (sites / apps) or an investment to build an audience.

I joined a shop.org event on Tuesday and retailers and ecommerce players are hard at work figuring out how to build their mobile presence and how to handle the complexity among handsets and OSes.  The ROI is there to justify the investment.

The ROI is the key to the decision to DEAL WITH IT.  In years past, the return may not have motivated many to invest to address the mobile opportunity. In 2009 and clearly in 2010, most businesses must build a plan for mobile or fall behind.

Mobile is complex and fragmentation is part of the equation. But most businesses can’t afford not to DEAL WITH IT.

Year of mobile questions be gone. Well said Rich.

Jason S
VP and GM North America