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I found the following interesting: Lessons from Developed Mobile Markets like Japan ... Mobile Monetization Levels in USA Could Surpass Desktop Within 1-3 Year

I found the following interesting: Lessons from Developed Mobile Markets like Japan ... Mobile Monetization Levels in USA Could Surpass Desktop Within 1-3 Years The "Monetization Levels" are the advertising revenue. The report states that desktop internet advertising revenue grew from $55 million (estimated) in 1995 to $73 billion in 2011 (estimated). (And advertising revenue per user went from $9 to $49 in the same period.) However, I have doubts that internet advertising will be as successful on mobile devices. Personally, I tend to avoid ad-supported apps or simply do not "click" on any ads within apps, but that's just me and I may be really off-base with the overall behavior of app users.

jpadkins 14y ago
maybe. if mobile ads means using geo, then the ads revenues might be better. Think "check out this new bar near you" or "here is a deal a block away". There is a lot of money chasing foot traffic in urban areas.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So for reference, when I left Sun in '95 I joined a startup named 'Golfweb' as their 'technology' guy. Golfweb was an online magazine about Golf, entirely digital, no print. They had partnered with Golf Digest (print only) because GD didn't know if this 'Internet thing' was a fad or not. Personally I think our agreement was with some nerdy kid in the mailroom but I digress. Anyway, we tried to sell companies like Ping Golf on banner ads. These guys were paying $10K - $40K per color page in Golf Digest so maybe $250K an issue and we were asking them to pay us $40K to have all the ads on our web site during the Masters Tournament. It was a hard sell even though at the time we were one of exactly two professional sites covering golf on the Internet. The challenge wasn't that Ping didn't understand advertising, what they didn't know yet was how effective it would be. They measured everything and without data they didn't know if it was more or less valuable than print. Because of that they were unwilling to spend any money. As it turned out that campaign was pretty wildly successful for them. Because of it they were way ahead of their competitors in exploiting the Internet for ads. Once they were in, their competitors followed, and that created a market model for costing golf advertising. So this is the same issue with mobility monetization today. Since there isn't a huge amount of experience out there it is not easy to justify spending a lot on it vs web moneitization which is by now a 'proven' channel. But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. In her presentation, Meeks proposed that mobile monetization should at least equal web monetization and probably exceed it. I've seen other people get there by reasoning about how people use their phone to find nearby places that can service some immediate need like food, car service, gas, Etc. As a contrived, but plausible, example consider a world with multiple Uber type livery services, and a user finds a nearby place on their phone's map application. You can sell the rights to a button that says "Pick me up here and take me there." to a company like Uber very effectively. As an 'advertisement' that is worth probably $1 - $3 a click depending on what the fare is going to be if its taken. Now is that exactly an ad? I don't know. It is a convenient pairing of service provider offering at a probabilistically determined 'good' time to offer. That any individual doesn't click on the offer is fine, as long as some percentage (even a small percent) do.
- 127001brewer 14y ago
  Great comment: ... But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. And I like your example using Uber, but I immediately see the difficultly of a car service company supporting that type of interactive technology. (Again, I may be way off base, but I would think a car service company, using your example, would have to invest heavily, relatively, in technology to support your example.)
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Uber actually does this today if you have the app. You tell it where you want to go, it shows you where the nearest car is and you say "pick me up!" (big green button) and you're done. What isn't yet done is that when you run the Maps app on the phone and you look for some place nearby, it 'up-sells' you an option to do what the Uber app currently does.

jpadkins 14y ago

maybe. if mobile ads means using geo, then the ads revenues might be better. Think "check out this new bar near you" or "here is a deal a block away". There is a lot of money chasing foot traffic in urban areas.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

So for reference, when I left Sun in '95 I joined a startup named 'Golfweb' as their 'technology' guy. Golfweb was an online magazine about Golf, entirely digital, no print. They had partnered with Golf Digest (print only) because GD didn't know if this 'Internet thing' was a fad or not. Personally I think our agreement was with some nerdy kid in the mailroom but I digress. Anyway, we tried to sell companies like Ping Golf on banner ads. These guys were paying $10K - $40K per color page in Golf Digest so maybe $250K an issue and we were asking them to pay us $40K to have all the ads on our web site during the Masters Tournament. It was a hard sell even though at the time we were one of exactly two professional sites covering golf on the Internet. The challenge wasn't that Ping didn't understand advertising, what they didn't know yet was how effective it would be. They measured everything and without data they didn't know if it was more or less valuable than print. Because of that they were unwilling to spend any money. As it turned out that campaign was pretty wildly successful for them. Because of it they were way ahead of their competitors in exploiting the Internet for ads. Once they were in, their competitors followed, and that created a market model for costing golf advertising. So this is the same issue with mobility monetization today. Since there isn't a huge amount of experience out there it is not easy to justify spending a lot on it vs web moneitization which is by now a 'proven' channel. But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. In her presentation, Meeks proposed that mobile monetization should at least equal web monetization and probably exceed it. I've seen other people get there by reasoning about how people use their phone to find nearby places that can service some immediate need like food, car service, gas, Etc. As a contrived, but plausible, example consider a world with multiple Uber type livery services, and a user finds a nearby place on their phone's map application. You can sell the rights to a button that says "Pick me up here and take me there." to a company like Uber very effectively. As an 'advertisement' that is worth probably $1 - $3 a click depending on what the fare is going to be if its taken. Now is that exactly an ad? I don't know. It is a convenient pairing of service provider offering at a probabilistically determined 'good' time to offer. That any individual doesn't click on the offer is fine, as long as some percentage (even a small percent) do.

127001brewer 14y ago
Great comment: ... But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. And I like your example using Uber, but I immediately see the difficultly of a car service company supporting that type of interactive technology. (Again, I may be way off base, but I would think a car service company, using your example, would have to invest heavily, relatively, in technology to support your example.)
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Uber actually does this today if you have the app. You tell it where you want to go, it shows you where the nearest car is and you say "pick me up!" (big green button) and you're done. What isn't yet done is that when you run the Maps app on the phone and you look for some place nearby, it 'up-sells' you an option to do what the Uber app currently does.