The Next Frontier: Advertisements Supporting Applications
The big guys all seem to agree that using advertisements to support user’s time spent outside of the browser is a good idea. For example, back in April 2006, Microsoft acquired in-game advertising pioneer, Massive Inc., for what was rumored to be $200 to $400 million. Google launched a competitive response with their AdWords in-game advertising initiative, which you can see here- http://www.google.com/ads/games/marketers.html. But it’s not just about ads in games. Yahoo! announced a deal with Adobe back in December of 2007 to put online ads in PDFs.
Why is this a big market opportunity? I think Brad Kertson, Senior Marketing Product Manager from Microsoft, says it all, “…users still spend greater than 60% of their computer time outside the browser, sending emails, working on documents, organizing pictures, and a long list of connected scenarios where virtually no ads are shown today.” Brad will be a guest speaker at ad:tech New York on Thursday, November 6th, speaking on the topic of advertising in applications (http://www.ad-tech.com/ny/adtech_new_york_speakers.aspx?Spkid=1781).
The biggest question for advertising in the application itself is quality. Online ads perform very well in search because very specific user intent can be understood and leveraged for very specific advertising purposes. Current in-application advertising efforts seem a lot more like display advertisements, which are getting increasingly pummeled by the downward economic pressures because they do not directly drive performance for marketers.
We believe a better way to generate advertising revenue with applications is while users are downloading them. Through W3i’s “Download Network”, W3i helps marketers get their valued software discovered by users who are demanding free or low cost applications. W3i’s Download Network works with all types of valued software applications, including various desktop widgets, trialware, and browser plug-ins. Publishers of desktop applications are able to utilize this advertising revenue stream to off-set their user acquisition and development costs, and turn a profit.
If you’d like to discover ways to increase revenue from your downloads, stop by our booth, #802, at ad:tech New York, or contact us by visiting www.w3i.com.
Rob Weber, Vice President of Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over eight, profitable years evolving W3i (owner of Freeze.com) in the Integrated Interactive Media industry.
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