SEO Werkt!

It’s no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility — of acquiring new users — is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue.

Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story and are worrying for developers. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

By June, the cost-per-install on Android had risen from $0.30 to $0.51, while iOS CPI has increased from $0.59 to $0.92.

W3i attributed this increase, in part, to mobile gaming giants like DeNA have entered the U.S. market, a prime example of the fact that, for the first time, billion-dollar companies are now competing with small to mid-sized developers. As free-to-play giants leverage their huge marketing budgets to help attract new users, the overall cost of user acquisition has increased — making it increasingly difficult for developers who are trying to make a living in apps.

“The entire user acquisition market is undergoing a sea change that will require mobile developers to re-think how they obtain and monetize their users,” said Robert Weber, co-founder of W3i. “This could be the ‘innovate or die’ moment for a lot of developers as the competition for mobile users continues to heat up.”

Many were surprised when popular Mac and iOS email client Sparrow recently exited to Google. Considering that the Sparrow team was widely respected, the app had risen to popularity, and the team had raised a seed round from some notable investors, it seemed a somewhat disappointing result.

The team behind iOS development startup, AppCubby, recently penned a post talking about what it called “The Sparrow problem” and the challenges facing indie mobile developers.

Here’s an excerpt:

… Things have definitely changed and Sparrow is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

AppCubby’s conclusion, mixed with this news from W3i, points to the hard truth that, going forward, developers will likely have to consider new alternatives to marketing. W3i recommends that developers focus on designing apps for strong monetization to optimize their ability to compete, along with making paid buys during focused time windos to magnify chart rankings. And, since cost rises with volume in this market, there’s still hope for beating the average rates by producing titles in less-saturated areas.

Meanwhile, W3i said that, for the most part, social app discovery is still an unproven method for developers, with Facebook’s App Center still new to the market and Apple’s App Store becoming increasingly competitive. But social mechanics will become increasingly important going forward.

Iris Shoor also recently penned a post for TechCrunch talking about the approach she and her team took to marketing their app, and how they used non-traditional marketing tactics to get to 10 million downloads, including getting customer stories and testimonials and creating direct channels to their users.

W31 also noted that, like we saw from Fiksu’s analysis in December, the value of new users jumps even more during long weekends. Unsurprisingly, the company found that holiday weekends are high in advertiser demand, with rates increasing by 65 percent over the 2012 Memorial Day Weekend, for example, with some CPI rates even more than quadrupling the industry standard.

This sponsored post is produced by Rob Weber, Co-Founder of W3i. 

At the recent MobileBeat/GamesBeat conference in San Francisco, I was interviewed on stage by Matt Marshall, VentureBeat’s Founder & Editor-In-Chief on the topic of designing apps for monetization.

The problem most app developers have is that they overly focus their initial design efforts on engagement and retention rather than monetization.  Most developers believe that once they launch a highly engaging mobile app, they’ll get around to optimizing for monetization. The problem is that most apps achieve their peak traffic levels within the first three to six months of launch. By the time they get around to optimizing monetization, they already blew past their peak traffic levels and are declining quickly.

The solution is to focus on designing for monetization upfront. Here are three specific examples of high impact tactics you can implement during design:

1. Integrated Interfaces for In-App Purchases/Offers - At W3i, one area in which we go above and beyond for our app partners to help them grow their business, is in optimizing their interfaces for in-app purchases and offers. Specifically, we see custom interfaces more than double generic interfaces that other monetization platforms typically utilize.
2. Explain What an In-App Purchase Upgrade Does – One mistake we see commonly made by developers is that they do not sufficiently explain how an in-app purchase upgrade will create value for the user’s experience. Better to excessively explain to a user what an in-app purchase upgrade does for them rather than to leave them in the dark.
3. Up Sell At the Right Time – Coordinate the offer with natural opportunities within the game.  For example, when the user is playing your battle game and loses a battle, display a better weapon at the level recap screen that could help them win the battle.

How do you know if your game is monetizing well? Let’s look at three different perspectives:

1. Percentage of Paying Users Each Day - In partnership with W3i, Kontagent recently analyzed the behavior of 2 million unique users across 19 different apps from March to June and found that the range of paying users on any given day was from approximately 0.02% (two one hundredths of one percent) to 0.1% (one tenth of one percent).
2. ARPDAU Benchmarks - Across W3i’s network of 13.7 million daily active users, Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) typically falls within the $0.05 to $0.25 range for the more successful casual/mass market iOS games, with about 40% of their revenue (on average) coming from offer-based monetization provided by W3i. The balance of monetization coming from cash transactions.
3. ARPDAU for the Highest Grossing Apps – Neil Young, CEO/founder of ngmoco, which is now owned by DeNA, recently reported that in their Rage of Bahamut game, which is consistently among the highest grossing titles in the U.S., they are generating as much as $0.60 to $1.50 ARPDAU. Before you race out and design your own strategy/RPG game, you may want to consider the massive amount of advertising being invested by DeNA/ngmoco, Gree, and others. As Gabe Leydon, CEO/founder of Machine Zone, stated during a recent panel I spoke on, we are just seeing the beginning of pressures on user acquisition in the strategy/RPG world as we have yet to see the impact of the largest game companies, like Tencent, launch in North America. Expect the costs to acquire users to continue to go up over the next 5-10 years as the land grab continues. Small- to medium-sized game developers should think about becoming ad suppliers and creating casual/mass market apps which showcase strategy/RPG apps.

Be proactive when in the planning stage to determine how you are going to monetize your game.  Basically the more integrated the monetization, the higher the conversion and the less invasive the ads so as not to deter retention.   Successful apps figure out this delicate balance.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Location analytics company Placed beat out four other mobile services companies today at our MobileBeat Innovation Competition.

For winning the competition, Placed bagged our Tesla Prize, which is named after Nikola Tesla, the scientist who developed early mobile communication. The company will receive a two-hour business strategy session from three principals at Tandem Capital, as well as 10,000 Business ExtrAA points from American Airlines (or around five domestic round-trip tickets).

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Box as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media, Ludei & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

The Good Ear, a company that has developed a smartphone app to help with hearing loss, has emerged triumphant in our smartphone app competition at MobileBeat 2012.

For winning the competition, The Good Ear bagged our Tesla Prize, which is named after Nikola Tesla, the scientist who developed early mobile communication. The company will receive a two-hour business strategy session from three principals at Tandem Capital, as well as 10,000 Business ExtrAA points from American Airlines (or around five domestic round-trip tickets).

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Box as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media, Ludei & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Five startups showed off their tablet apps at MobileBeat 2012 today, but only NukoToys impressed the judges enough to win our startup tablet competition.

The company has developed interactive tablet apps that work together with trading cards, making them perfect fodder for kids obsessed with collectable toys like Pokémon cards and Skylanders figures. NukoToys fashioned itself as “Silicon Valley’s toy company” when we covered it two years ago, but today we caught a glimpse and just how the company could earn that lofty title.

Founder Rodger Raderman showed how he could simply tap a trading card to an iPad and make a virtual animal appear within an app. It took him a few tries before the app recognized the card, but the harsh stage lighting likely didn’t help his demo. Parents and kids can also buy virtual versions of the trading cards, but Raderman pointed out that the trading cards are more in line with the kinesthetic play kids are used to.

For winning the competition, NukoToys bagged our Tesla Prize, which is named after Nikola Tesla, the scientist who developed early mobile communication. The company will receive a two-hour business strategy session from three principals at Tandem Capital, as well as 10,000 Business ExtrAA points from American Airlines (or around five domestic round-trip tickets).

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Box as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media, Ludei & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

There’s more to running an app business than just building a cool app. Join us at MobileBeat 2012, where some of the minds behind popular apps like ESPN Mobile, Z2Live, and CBS Interactive, will discuss what it takes to create a thriving app business.

The Art & Science of Running Your App Business with a 360 Degree Approach

If you build it, they may not come. If you promote it, you may not retain them. If you retain them, you may never make money. Rapid industry maturation is dragging companies into an interdisciplinary battle to run their businesses effectively or get left behind. Simply put, to remain competitive, you need a skillful 360-degree approach to running an app business. And you need to be able to measure it all.  Listen to a panel of some of the most successful app makers in mobile today to learn how they play to win in the hyper-competitive mobile app marketplace.

Speakers

Lou Fasulo, Chief Operating Office, Z2Live
Michael Bayle, SVP and General Manager, ESPN Mobile
Philippe Browning, VP, Advertising and Operations, CBS Interactive

Moderator 

Peter Farago, Vice President of Marketing, Flurry

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Box as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media, Ludei, Animoca  & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, PayOne, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref, Scandit & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible — visually and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco, is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Without users, it doesn’t matter how innovative your mobile app or game is. At next week’s GamesBeat 2012 conference in San Francisco, we explore the future of user acquisition with speakers such as Rober Weber, a cofounder of W3i; Gabriel Leydon, the CEO of Machine Zone; Ben Vu, a cofounder and CEO of SkyVu Entertainment; and mobile strategy consultant A.J. Yeakel.

As VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi put it back in April, “What app makers have to spend to get the attention of Apple device users has risen out of control. That’s a tough fact of life that could make survival hard in the Darwinian mobile app ecosystem. Solving this problem is going to require a lot of innovation and clear thinking. And if it isn’t solved, we’re going to see a number of mobile app companies start to die. If Apple and others in the ecosystem don’t handle it right, it could be a bloodbath for developers.”

This year’s GamesBeat conference will also be co-located with our MobileBeat 2012 conference, where we’ll be exploring how design is the new battleground.

App User Acquisition Today & Tomorrow – Where is it all headed?

The cost to acquire users for mobile games continues to rise. Learn from top experts representing game studios large and small how they are evolving their marketing campaigns to find gamers and how they are optimizing their games to maximize profitability. Key topics include how the social space is impacting discovering of apps now and into the future in light of recent changes by social platforms. We’ll talk about which marketing campaigns have been successful and which campaigns are failing, the tactics that are moving the needle with respect to monetization to improve profitability from user acquisition, the changing methods of user identification and the impact on performance measurement, and how indies are competing with large players to acquire users.

Speakers

Gabriel “Gabe” Leydon is the cofounder and chief executive officer of Machine Zone, Inc., a high growth, free-to-play, mobile, social gaming company. Under Gabriel’s leadership, Machine Zone has created top-grossing hits such as iMob, iMob2, Original Gangstaz, and Global War for iOS devices. Gabriel launched the company (then known as Addmired) in September 2007, joined Y Combinator in the winter of 2008, and is now driving Machine Zone to become the leader in free-to-play mobile games.

A.J. Yeakel is currently a mobile strategy consultant and advisor to companies, including Flurry/Activision Mobile Publishing, Presidio Mobile, and Popover Games. Previously, A.J. served as head of mobile marketing and revenue at Zynga, helping to grow Zynga’s mobile division from 100,000 to over 15 million active daily users. During his time in the mobile group at Zynga, A.J. oversaw 15-plus marketing launches across iOS, Android and HTML5.

Rob Weber cofounded W3i in 2000, growing W3i to be a leader in app user acquisition and monetization. For 42 consecutive quarters, the company has turned a profit and has grown to over 120 employees. For more than a decade, Rob worked to create solutions to increase distribution, drive revenue, and heighten engagement for app developers such as DeNA, Gree, Kabam, PocketGems, and many other indie and public developers. Under Rob’s leadership, W3i recently launched a mobile offer exchange that includes partnerships with leading offer providers.

Ben Vu is the cofounder and CEO of SkyVu Entertainment, a Top 50 mobile game developer with over 17 million downloads of their award-winning Battle Bears mobile game franchise. A recipient of TouchArcade’s Best iPhone Games of the Year and iLounge’s Top 100 Games of the Year, SkyVu’s core 3D action games have reached the top of charts in both paid, free, and top-grossing in over 50 countries.

Moderator

Steve Peterson, the West Coast Editor for GameIndustry International

GamesBeat 2012?s theme is “The Crossover Era.” The game industry as we know it is changing. We’re seeing established companies cross over from one market to another, where once they faced barriers. As companies adapt to change, we are witnessing disruption, change, consolidation, innovation, and the arrival of big money. We’re talking billions of dollars that are at stake.

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting GamesBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; King.com as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry and Tapjoy as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, LifeStreet Media, Ludei and Nokia Developer as Silver Sponsors; and Betable, Game Insight, Gree, Kontagent, Nexage, Paypal, Pontiflex, Swrve, and XYOlogic as Event Sponsors.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500-plus execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your tickets here.

Photo via Shutterstock

Filed under: games, mobile, VentureBeat

We’re just one week away from MobileBeat 2012, VentureBeat’s annual mobile conference, and we’ve lined up some of the biggest names in the industry to delve into the event’s core theme: “Design is the new battleground.”

We’ve snagged Trevor Dryer, head of product management at Intuit; Steve Schlenker, co-founder at DN Capital; Rob Weber, co-founder of W3i; Michael Goff, co-founder and CEO of Cocoafish; and Mark Curtis, founder of Fjord; along with a slew of other great speakers.

You can find the full speaker list at the MobileBeat 2012 website.

MobileBeat 2012 takes place July 10-11 at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. This year it’s taking place alongside our GamesBeat 2012 conference, which is focused on the “Crossover Era” of gaming. Register for MobileBeat 2012 here (you can also sign up for a combined GamesBeat pass at a discount).

Trevor Dryer is Intuit’s Head of Product Management, Mobile Payments & Point of Sale. Trevor manages two cross-functional teams responsible for Intuit’s mobile payments (GoPayment) and point of sale products. Dryer oversees product creation and design, customer research, hardware and overall product strategy. Since assuming his role, he has increased customer acquisition up 1000%, cost of acquisition down 85% and achieved the highest mobile card processing volume in the industry.

Steve Schlenker is a co-founder of DN Capital and has more than 17 years of venture capital and private equity experience. Steve’s focus at DN Capital is on enterprise software and digital media investments. Steve currently oversees DN Capital portfolio companies Endeca, FamilyBuilder, IGA Worldwide, MoreMagic, Lagan, Datanomic, and Digital Chocolate. Prior to co-founding DN Capital, Steve was chief investment officer at SUN Capital Partners, where he was a Director of e-Start.com and was also involved in the successful sale of PlanetAll to Amazon.

Rob Weber co-founded W3i in 2000, growing W3i to be a leader in app user acquisition and monetization. For 42 consecutive quarters the company continues to be profitable and has grown to over 120 employees. For more than a decade, Rob worked to create solutions to increase distribution, drive revenue and heighten engagement for app developers, such as DeNA, Gree, Kabam, PocketGems and many other indie and public developers. Under Rob’s leadership, W3i recently launched a mobile offer exchange that includes partnerships with leading offer providers.

Michael Goff is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cocoafish, the mobile server backend company dedicated to helping developers add networked features to their apps without writing any server code. He led the growth of Cocoafish from concept in early 2010 to acquisition by Appcelerator as a cash flow positive lean startup in January, 2012. At Appcelerator, Michael continues to lead the development, sales, and marketing of Cocoafish to Appcelerator’s large developer and enterprise customer base.

Mark Curtis served as the Chief Executive Officer at Handmade Mobile Entertainment Limited. Mr. Curtis co-founded Fjordnet Limited in 2004. He has a strong track record in media innovation (for clients such as Yell, RAC & Allied Domecq). Mr. Curtis was a Partner at Fjord, building cross platform and mobile products for Nokia & Orange. Prior to that, he served as a Global Executive Vice President for Razorfish, responsible for 1500 staff. Together with a Partner, he set up CHBi in 1994 to develop interactive technology solutions for marketing clients.

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible — visually and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco, is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat