AdMob, whose acquisition by Google is still pending during an FTC investigation of its impact on the market, remains busy rolling out new products and services for developers and advertisers. This morning the company announced that it had upgraded its iPhone and Android SDKs and that it was making avaiable a new ad unit for mobile browsers.
According to the release the improvements include:
- Updated Android SDK – Brings AdMob’s rich media ad units including expandable canvas and multi-panel banner to Android devices
- Updated iPhone SDK – Features performance enhancements and gives developers additional server side flexibility
- New Flash Lite SDK (beta) – Enables monetization with CPC text ads on this growing platform
- New Adaptive Mobile Ad Unit – Innovative banner ad unit remains a constant size as consumers pinch and scroll through a Web site that’s designed for a PC screen on their mobile device
- New Publisher Dashboard – Customizable interface for publishers to view all the key statistics for their mobile Web sites and various applications in one location
- Enhanced Reporting UI – Saves publishers time by giving them the ability to customize and save the reports they run on a regular basis
- Reporting API (beta) – Enables publishers and advertisers to build their own tools and dashboards
- Server Side SDK Controls – Gives publishers ability to dynamically control the display and format of the ads in their applications
- AdWhirl for iPhone and Android applications – Open source mediation gives the developers of more than 1,500 mobile applications additional choice and control in monetizing their mobile traffic
The new “adaptive mobile ad unit” is intended to substitute a mobile-optimized ad for a PC ad in the mobile browser experience. This can be the same advertiser or a different one, according to publisher preferences. This ad unit is similar to one that AOL’s now largely disbanded Third Screen Media unit developed for the iPhone some time ago.
I find it strange that there’s such little discussion of how sub-optimized the ads on conventional PC sites are when viewed on a mobile browser. This new AdMob unit is intended to address that problem. Most publishers probably are just unaware of the lost opportunity when users access their sites (or Flash ads) through a mobile browser and see those tiny PC ads.
AdMob also told me yesterday that “if 2009 was the year of the iPhone than 2010 is the year of cross-platform” (read: Android). According to a developer survey AdMob recently conducted:
- 31 percent of developers in its network are working across multiple mobile platforms today and almost half (47 percent) said they plan on developing on more than one platform in the next six months.
- More than 70 percent of iPhone developers plan to develop for Android over the next six months and close to half of Android developers (48 percent) plan to develop for iPhone.
- 58 percent of developers said they currently develop mobile Web sites.
- Many developers are new to mobile with 49 percent saying they have been developing for mobile less than a year.
- Developers also said they are generally satisfied with the success of their applications with 64 percent rating their app “very” or “somewhat” successful.
- Developers were most satisfied with the iPhone platform and least satisfied with RIM.
