After just 8 days of using the new AdMob iPhone tools to monetize my iPhone webapps, I'm removing them from ALL of my iPhone sites/webapps. Frankly, AdMob has been a complete waste of my time and money.
About AdMob - How It Works (in theory) AdMob are a mobile advertising network that allows publishers, such as me, to place ads on the mobile sites I create and publish. I receive revenue every time a visitor clicks one of the ads on my sites.
The other side of the AdMob business model is the service they provide to advertisers. An advertiser creates an account, deposits some money, creates an advert and then specifies their targeting requirements.
An advertiser can target by mobile device (iPhone in this instance) and Country. They also specify a 'site category'. This is used by both publishers and advertisers to match ad campaigns to content.
I for example have a Free iTunes Webapp at http://myijump.com/freeitunes/ - In AdMob I categorised it under 'Music'. Ads that have also been categorised by advertisers as 'Music' will show up on my site. There's a little more to it that that, but you get the general idea.
The single most important element to the AdMOb business model is that without one or the other, it all goes to shit! With no publishers to show the ads, they'll be no advertisers. With no advertisers, the publishers will have no ads to show.
On Friday 25th July 2008, I was just having a dig around the Internet and saw that AdMob had completely re-engineered their offering to iPhone Publishers and Advertisers. It looked incredible, and more importantly it looked as though they had addressed most of the issues that led me to leave them a few weeks back.
So What Went Wrong With AdMob This Time?
Do understand that I have no problem with the issues faced by an early adopter of any new system. These would be addressed over time.
The early issues include:
- Too few advertisers This led to my available ad inventory fill rate of less than 20%. So for every 100 visitors, less than 20 would see any ads. The rest would see just a blank space.
- Poor Site/Webapp Categorisation Publishers are only able to select one category for each of their webapps. My iPhone Portal at http://myijump.com simple does not fit in to just one category.
The BIG ISSUE with AdMob
3 cents per click! I give over ad space to AdMob and they pay me as little as 3 cents per click.
Nuff said!
Not quite... As an advertiser I was paying 63 cents per click to AdMob. My own experiences show that a publisher would be paid as little as 3 cents. What the fuck is happening to the other 60 cents?
About: admob, iphone advertising, iphone marketing, iphone webapp advertising, iphone webapps, mobile advertising, mobile marketing
Reader Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.
TrackBacks & Pings
You're welcome to trackback/ping AdMob Still Not Delivering Value To iPhone Developers & Publishers. Trackbacks & Pings are moderated and will take a few hours to appear.
The TrackBack / Ping for this article is http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341d4e3a53ef00e553e7966e8834
