March 2012 is almost over and nearly ended without a blog post! Despite my blogging oversight, a lot has been going on at ImproviSoft this month:
- Attended my first Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Redmond/Bellevue. Microsoft put on a great event and I enjoyed meeting MVPs from around the world and people from Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Windows Azure, DirectX, Visual Studio, and Windows 8 teams. Seeing the roadmaps for Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Azure was exciting and I can’t wait to see them play out.
- Received great feedback from the AdStreamer private-beta and are making changes based on that feedback now. This has pushed out its release date, but I think it will be worth the wait.
- Started work on AdStreamer’s first cloud-based features and thought “Windows Azure is the best thing Microsoft has made lately that hardly anyone yet knows about”. Expect that to change!
- ImproviSoft made it to the semi-finals of New York’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition. It was a great experience and I am pretty sure we’ll be back again next year to win it!
- ImproviSoft was selected as one of the 25 finalists for StartFast 2012! We believe there is much to gain from being in this program and are looking forward to fully participating in the process this year.
ImproviSoft is currently seeking a highly experienced Windows Azure Architect and ASP.NET e-Commerce Web Designer/Developer, preferably located in the Central New York region. References and portfolio are required. If interested, please Contact Us.
Microsoft contacted me the day after I wrote my last article about the need for a Windows Phone Marketplace Affiliate Program and let me know that they already have one in the works. Even though it’s not even in Beta yet, they were nice enough to let me give it a try.
Please note that at this time Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace Affiliate Program is in development and participation is by invitation only.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace Affiliate Program
Today I started publishing affiliate ads for the Marketplace and as you’d expect, it’s really easy. Cut and paste some HTML with your affiliate ID in the target URL and you’re in business. The general Marketplace affiliate banner ad is shown below (and it comes in a few different sizes):
It’s also possible to promote specific apps and games with ads like the ones below, whose graphics were provided by the Marketplace, or by creating your own ad banners or text ads:
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When you click on one of these ad banners, the Windows Phone Marketplace website opens in your browser. On a desktop PC the Windows Phone Marketplace website looks great, but I quickly found that it wasn’t designed to be viewed on IE for Windows Phone. For showing an app on the phone, I’d much prefer to see the phone’s current Marketplace UI, in a similar way that the Windows Phone SDK’s Show-Marketplace Task displays it, instead of a Web-based Marketplace UI on “IE for Windows Phone”.
Revolutionizing App-Store Affiliate Programs
I’ve barely started using it, but I think the Windows Phone Marketplace affiliate program has a lot of potential. Still, there is one thing that I think would vastly improve it and revolutionize app-store affiliate programs forever. You see, the Affiliate Program currently implements the typical “Web affiliate program” model, whereby the referring affiliate gets a cut of the sale, but as you likely know, most apps are FREE and even 100% of FREE is still NOTHING! So my “revolutionary” idea is: App-store affiliate programs should provide a way for affiliates to profit from referring Free app downloads as well as Paid app purchases. Now I realize that at first that may sound ludicrous and impossible, so let me explain…
The trend toward monetizing free apps with in-app advertising/purchases has really taken off in recent years because app-stores and developers recognize that the profit potential is much greater with this monetization strategy than by just selling apps. Phone users love free apps and download them at a much higher rate than paid apps. With the traditional affiliate program model, affiliates have no way to profit by promoting free apps, and so they won’t! This means that developers are stuck promoting these higher-profit-potential apps themselves – and I suspect that most don’t know how to do that effectively. Affiliates on the other hand, are generally more adept at promoting products because it’s their main revenue stream.
Q: So how do you incentivize affiliates to promote free apps?
A: Give them a cut of revenue from in-app advertising (or in-app purchases).
If this were to happen, app developers would get help promoting their apps to a broader audience and more apps would be downloaded, resulting in more ad-revenue for Microsoft and app developers. Affiliates would be able to make money by promoting Paid apps using the traditional affiliate model or by promoting Free apps by accruing a percentage of ad-revenue from referred apps that use pubCenter’s Ad SDK. In other words, it’s a Win-Win-Win scenario for Microsoft, Developers, and Affiliates!
Implementing this “free app affiliate monetization” feature in Microsoft’s Ad SDK would likely cause affiliates to promote free apps that use it over apps that use competitors’ Ad SDKs (e.g. AdMob, Millennial Media, Smaato, etc.), which would be a side-benefit for Microsoft. But Microsoft could also provide the affiliate referral tracking as a service to other Ad SDK vendors through an API, leveling the Ad SDK playing field (and therefore reducing litigation risk) while further extending the reach of the Windows Phone Marketplace Affiliate Program and enhancing the Windows Phone ecosystem.
Posted in Advertising Marketing Marketplace by .
Today I read through Tomi Ahonen’s ~12,000 word hit-job on Stephen Elop, a diatribe that once again rails against his 2011 “Burning Platform” speech, and which pretends to put it in the light of historical context. But as Ahonen once set up and headed Nokia’s Global 3G Business Consultancy Department, it becomes clear that this jilted lover of Nokia’s past glory had primarily three things on his mind – revenge and promotion of his book-blog and an earlier publication that is currently #1,055,670 on the Amazon marketplace.
You can read the wordy manifesto at the link below, although I only recommend skimming it because you’ll get the idea after only a few paragraphs:
Tomi Ahonen’s Blog Attack on Stephen Elop
For a little perspective, let’s look at the NOK stock price from Q4-2008 through Q1-2011:
NOK had dropped from $40/share to $9/share, and according to Gartner Research, Nokia’s smartphone OS market share had dropped from 66% to 28% over the same period. That’s not exactly a glowing example of successfully competing in the marketplace.
Q: So what did Stephen Elop have to do with that?
A: Absolutely Nothing. It was the result of the predecessor CEO’s failure to compete in a market that had been radically changed by the emergence of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS.
What’s clear from Ahonen’s wordy post is that its difficult to have perspective when you’re neck-deep in your own pride. MeeGo was a promising OS but Nokia’s demise between 2007 and 2011 did not come about by Elop’s platform speech (it hadn’t been delivered yet). It came about because Nokia’s previous CEO had failed to understand the changed dynamic of the smartphone market – that it was no longer just about devices or even OSes, but also about the global platform eco-system. That its flagship Symbian OS was antiquated and its MeeGo wasn’t maturing quickly enough, and wasn’t going to garner a developer base or an eco-system outside of Nokia itself, certainly didn’t help. MeeGo was going the way of WebOS before it ever got started.
One year later with Elop-era products just starting to hit the market is too early to judge Nokia, which makes the timing of this manifesto seem like a last ditch attempt to apply for martyrdom and say “I told you so” first. Over the last year the stock has continued to plummet, in part because of Elop’s memo killing off MeeGo (rightly or wrongly), and in part because of the continued inability of Symbian to compete with iOS and Android. Was Elop’s memo well-received? No. But only time will tell whether or not he was justified in delivering it and setting Nokia on a new course.
Here’s a little more perspective from CES 2012:
Q: Did the CES 2012 Best of Show Award go to a Symbian or MeeGo smartphone?
A: Um, no. It went to Elop’s 3rd Child, the Nokia Lumia 900: Best of CES 2012
That’s a sign of good things to come and so is the fact that a lot of people are dying to get their hands on one. While the star of the “My iPhone/Android-phone was Smoked by Windows Phone” videos from CES 2012 was the HTC Titan II (another great Windows Phone), the Lumia 900 might be considered an even better Windows Phone model.
Ahonen goes on to criticize Elop for then laying off tens of thousands of workers who wouldn’t get on-board with Elop’s new direction for Nokia and who largely represented Nokia’s past, rather than its future. But with the company bleeding market-share and cash quickly, Elop’s pink-slip tourniquet was necessary. When charting the company’s new course, workers either needed to get on-board the ship (or in this case, the platform) or get off. Yes, they were hard-nosed tactics, but necessary ones too. If Nokia had failed with MeeGo or Elop let dissent become a cancer, Nokia would’ve bled dry and 100% of Nokia employees would’ve been let go.
But Nokia now stands a chance of success and the rest of 2012 will be a telling sign of which direction its stock price and the company will go. Nokia is all-in on the Microsoft partnership, which they need to be in order to make it work and turn the company around. So far, with these new Nokia Lumia phones and the solid footing of the Windows Phone platform and rapidly growing ecosystem, Nokia’s future is looking bright once again.
Posted in Smartphone News by .
While the Windows Phone Marketplace has been expanded to more than three dozen countries over the past year, developers have continued to express frustration that Microsoft Advertising’s “pubCenter for Mobile” Windows Phone Ad SDK only serves paid ads to a small number of countries. After months of complaining about zero-eCPM from many countries where it appeared ads were being served, Microsoft Advertising has finally clarified two very important issues:
- The list of countries for which ads are served (and ad-revenue is paid):
Yesterday Troy Wood from Microsoft announced the official country list to which ads are being served:
- Australia
- Belgium
- Canada
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
While many devs report seeing positive eCPM from the USA, Germany, and the UK, most devs are still reporting seeing zero or near-zero eCPM from the other countries on this list. It was my assumption that they’re seeing this because of low ad-inventory in those countries. For developers whose apps target users in countries other than those three, they are seeing near-zero ad-revenue, and this is frustrating them – particularly XNA game developers, who have no other choice than to use pubCenter, because the only other monetizing XNA Ad SDKs are the currently defective ones by Smaato and Millennial Media.
- Why apps are showing impressions while devs are getting zero-eCPM in many countries:
Mr. Wood recently reported that there is a problem with the pubCenter for Mobile impression counts. Specifically, the impression counts are actually ads-requested *PLUS* ads-filled. So this means that for each actual impression, the impression count is incorrectly showing 2 impressions, and for every unfilled ad-request, that count is still showing 1 impression. So if you see hundreds of impressions in Russia and zero-eCPM and zero ad-revenue, it’s because none of the ad-requests were filled, but they still were erroneously counted as impressions. Despite explaining this on the “pubCenter for Mobile” forum many times, most developers are still not aware of the explanation. Furthermore, months have gone by since this was first reported, which makes developers wonder why it’s taking so long to fix it.
I appreciate those clarifications from Microsoft, but we’re still left wondering about these pubCenter Ad SDK issues:
- The newly reported country list is not very long in comparison to country lists from other ad-networks, some of which claim support for payouts in over 200 countries. While it’s noteworthy that those other ad-networks are paying less than one-cent eCPM in most of those countries, it shows that they are ready to expand into them when the phone user base grows there. I understand that it takes time to build a significant phone user base (unless you are Apple or Google at the moment), roll out ad-networks with marketing, and drive advertising sales, but why isn’t Microsoft showing dominance, or at least readiness, here?
- Developers would find it helpful or at least comforting to know the schedule or plans for providing payouts from other countries. It’s my observation that Microsoft is losing credibility with some developers by not providing this info, and by not following the schedule that they provided in July 2011 indicating that even more countries would have been supported by the end of last year. For which countries will support be provided next and when does Microsoft project they will be rolled out? Without providing this information and clarifying whether they are plans or just projections, Microsoft Advertising’s PR problem with a large segment of developers is likely to continue.
- Many devs are reporting zero-ecpm from Australia and some of the other countries on this list, which begs the questions: How recently were Australia, France, etc. added to it and is there significant ad-inventory for them yet? My guess is that the answers are “recently” and “no”. In recent months most devs have only seen payouts from the USA, Germany, and UK, and while I’ve also seen payouts from Canada, they’ve been relatively small. It seems that ad-inventory is low in other countries, although I’d expect them to increase after many more Windows Phones are sold this year. It would be nice if Microsoft provided sales statistics for each country, but since this is competitive info, I doubt they will.
- When will the impression count corrections be made to the pubCenter reporting system? Other ad-networks provide not only impression counts, but also ads-requested, ad requests filled, and the fill-rate (ads-filled / ads-requested * 100)%. Microsoft should do this too and provide graphical reports for this data over time. At the very least though, Microsoft needs to immediately correct this misleading bug in their reporting system, and is remiss in not doing so.
Despite its shortcomings, Microsoft Advertising’s “pubCenter for Mobile” is still the best Ad SDK for Windows Phone today, particularly for XNA developers. In countries where it pays out, it has higher eCPM than any other ad-network, including Google’s AdMob. Smaato and Millennial Media still haven’t fixed their defective Ad SDKs from early 2011 (don’t be fooled by Millennial Media’s January 24, 2012 “release” of v1.0 – it has the same DLLs as last year and only license files have been added to it). And while I think AdDuplex is great for marketing, it’s not a great monetizing solution yet (in fact, AdDuplex has stopped providing the monetization option to new customers).
So while I really like Microsoft Advertising’s Ad SDK, they could be doing a lot better job of addressing and communicating about these issues.
Posted in Advertising Libraries and SDKs by .
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