The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) for their acquisition of AdMob. The FTC is checking to see if the acquisition of AdMob would reduce competition for advertising on mobile phones.
“We’re not going to discuss the details of that process,” stated Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich. “We’re confident that they’ll conclude that the rapidly growing mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes.”
A combination of Google and AdMob would create the largest mobile advertising company. The companies controlled about 21% of the market combined in 2009. [Bloomberg]
The Palm Pre application store has about 400 applications. Many are paid and some of them are free. The free ones need a way to make money so this is where AdMob comes in. AdMob announced today that they are providing beta support for placing advertisements within Palm applications.
AdMob is becoming a property of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), but the company has not been slowing down since the acquisition announcement. The company announced earlier this week that they will support video advertisements for the iPhone and iPod Touch. iPhone and iPod Touch users will still be able to surf the web or watch other videos while the video ad is playing. Videos are saved as different file sizes and will play different qualities based on the user’s connection. For example, higher quality videos will play when a user is on a WiFi or 3G connection.
“AdMob’s new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers’ love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers’ goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers,” stated AdMob Founder and CEO Omar Hamoui. “We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize.”
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was considering buying out AdMob before Google swooped in and picked them up for $750 million in stock. Apple contacted AdMob several weeks before the Google acquisition according to Bloomberg.
AdMob is a major mobile advertising company that integrates advertisements into iPhone and Android applications. Generally applications that are free tend to have built in AdMob advertisements. After buying out AdMob, Google has become the largest mobile ad company.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is buying one of the biggest mobile phone advertising companies for $750 million in stock. AdMob started in December 2006 and is based in San Mateo, California. AdMob powers a lot of the advertising that shows up in iPhone and Android applications.
“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” stated Google VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki. “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup – generating impressive year on year revenue growth – and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”
“I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” stated AdMob founder Omar Hamoui.
AdMob is one of the biggest advertising mobile companies. Most iPhone application developers sign up with AdMob as their advertising broker. AdMob just got a little bigger after announcing the acquisition of AdWhirl.
AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui said that the acquisition was made to create a transparent mobile ad exchange. Interestingly two months ago AdMob and AdWhirl were not playing nice with each other.
On July 22nd, AdMob wrote a blog post stated, “AdMob will no longer serve ads requested from iPhone apps that employ ad network mediation layers such as AdWhirl or Tapjoy. This change will enable us to provide our publishers and advertisers, as well as end users, with the best possible experience and results.”
The acquisition amount is not substantial because AdWhirl does not have much cash on hand nor do they have licensing deals in place with ad partners. AdMob’s traffic declined since they decided to stop using mediation layers. Quattro, another big iPhone ad company put their support behind AdWhirl. AdMob bought out AdWhirl for their assets, not for the company itself.
Amit Chowdhry | August 8, 2009 | 750 views | Comments Categorized under AdMob, Ali Diab
AdMob has temporarily decided to reverse the decision to turn off aggregators. AdMob is the advertising company that built a platform for iPhone developers to monetize their applications.
This past June, AdMob said that there were technical complaints regarding advertisements that were served by “ad net mediators” such as AdWhirl and Tapjoy. The decision to turn off ad aggregators caused criticism from developers so AdMob decided to temporarily reverse their decision. This way developers can continue to use multiple mobile ad networks.
“We have decided to temporarily delay the discontinuation of support for mediation layers until we can introduce a comprehensive plan that meets our publishers’ needs while also continuing to provide advertisers and end users with the best possible experience on mobile.” stated AdMob VP of Product Management Ali Diab in a blog post.
