W3i mobile product manager Derrick Fountain was recently interviewed by the Wireless  Industry Partnership. His preview of what trends to watch fro from the MWC can be found on the WIP blog. In the interview, Fountain addresses one of the trends emerging in the mobile space regarding monetization. Saying “We are currently seeing a pivot in the industry where engagement has a direct impact on monetization.  The shift away from paid downloads (total units x revenue-per-unit-sold) to the freemium model (total users x revenue-per-DAU) where usage plays a major factor in monetization.”

Fountain also gives a sneak peak at an upcoming announcement from W3i adding to our mobile solutions network.

You can read the full post on the WIP Blog.

TV versus Web

January and February are, with out a doubt, major months for the broadcast television industry. The two months historically play host to a majority of the major awards shows (Oscars, Golden Globes, SAGS, and Grammys) as well as prime time coverage of the President’s State of the Union Address and the holy grail of U.S. media, the Superbowl. That got us thinking, what impact does that have on web traffic when, allegedly, most America is glued to the tube? The results may surprise you.

Traffic during the State of the Union

Traffic during the Superbowl

Web Traffic Impacted By Primetime

Not shockingly the Superbowl was the winner over the State of the Union for biggest change in traffic.

• Around kick off time, traffic dropped about 30% in the W3i network.

For both the Superbowl and State of the Union we compared stats to 7 days prior. (Red Line is the event, Blue line is 7 days prior)

We’ll let you infer the rest. Congrats Greenbay.

Peter Novotny, Senior Marketing Manager, W3i, LLC
Peter uses his years of experience in Media Buying and Search Engine Marketing to lead the B2C user acquisition efforts for W3i’s web properties.

App Development Tip: We’re Definitely In The Right Industry

It was a week of milestones, shocks and reminders of how awesome the apps industry is. However, much of the past 7 days were dominated by Apple news.

On Monday we learned that Steve Jobs was taking another leave of absence for an unspecified length of time, on Tuesday Apple stunned the world with their latest sales numbers showing how far they’ve come from the $2/share days of the late 80s. But, for app developers and marketers, the big news came as the Apple App Store Approached 10 Billion Downloads . New research shows apps are surpassing digital music in sheer download numbers as well as growth rate of those downloads.  The data reinforces that it’s the right time to be in the business of apps.

App Marketing Juggernaut, Angry Birds, Knocked From Roost

A game called Bubble Ball knocked Angry Birds from their roost as the #1 free iPhone app.  But the toppling of the App Store darling wasn’t the story, bubble balls creator,  14-year-old Robert Nay of Utah reminded us all to focus on passion. He made the game because he wanted to. He created a quality game, the user base grew and now he’s in a position to monetize. He didn’t set out with the goal of monetizing; he let the drive for quality and creating value lead his efforts.

The App Market Continues To Grow

In case Apple’s announcements weren’t enough to set the stage, Sarah Perez from Read Write Mobile reminded us just how big the app market is expected to get. Read Write Mobile published a new report from World Mobile Applications Market that shows the Mobile App Market: $25 Billion by 2015.

App Marketing/Development Tip/Thought of the Week

I’m a big fan of Seth Godin’s (the author of Linchpin, Tribes and Purple Cow) blog. I find that many times his insights are multipurpose and his Thursday post ironically speaks well to freemium game mechanics. He provided a reminder of the importance in timing rewards. The compulsion loop in gaming and use of push notifications won’t produce results for your monetization efforts if they are poorly timed and executed.

Did we miss something big from the week in apps? Let us know in the comments below. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to check out our daily roundup on twitter by scanning the QR code below or following the link. You can also follow us on twitter @w3i or join the app marketing/development community and follow/use the hashtag #appschat.

Interested in what we find daily? Scan the code with your smartphone or click it to link to our daily newsletter.

Ryan Ruud, Associate Marketing Communications Specialist, W3i, LLC
Ryan is a new media communicator with a decade of traditional and emerging mass media experience. He uses his passion for apps and connecting people in W3i’s marketing/communications efforts.

Apple loves to mark major milestones with big giveaways and while my fingers are crossed that I download the 10 billionth app from the App Store, Horace Dediu over at Asymco decided to mark the occasion by revisiting app growth metrics. He analyzes them alongside iTunes Music Store Growth.

By now I’m sure you’ve seen countless blogs including TechCrunch report Horace’s finding that more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold.But there’s a more watershed finding in his data.

From Britney, GaGa and Bieber To Angry Birds, Groupon and Pandora

Hands down, the most stunning inference from Horace’s data is the quantity of app downloads and the growth rate of the App Store. Chief among his findings:

• 30,000,000+ daily app downloads versus around 10,000,000 daily song downloads
• The App Store will hit 10,000,000,000 downloads in less than half the time it took iTunes to mark the milestone

Ponder for a moment what those numbers allude to. . .Apps are more in demand than digital music in Apple’s distribution channels.

The red line below shows the daily download rate of apps, while the blue line indicates music. The slope of app line is significantly steeper than that of music.

Even with the emotional and cultural significance that music plays across the world, the number of daily app downloads far exceed and outpace growth rate of music downloads. As a former Top 40 radio guy that would be lost without his Pandora, Shazam and I Heart Radio Apps these stats literally blows my mind.

Apps Are Just Getting Started

Horace draws three conclusions from his findings

1. Apps overtaking digital music is a watershed event. Apps are a new medium: they will impact all other media.
2. As the number of apps attached to any single device continues to increase, apps create increasingly higher switching costs for users.
3. Apps consumption is increasing at a rate to overtake the PC software market.

You can read his full report here. Needless to say it’s a great time to be developing an app and if you can solve the discovery challenge, the potential is tremendous.

Ryan Ruud, Associate Marketing Communications Specialist, W3i, LLC
Ryan is a new media communicator with a decade of traditional and emerging mass media experience. He uses his passion for apps and connecting people in W3i’s marketing/communications efforts.

Featured on ClickZ, November 30, 2010

In the world of digital media, search engine marketing is so widely adopted that I often find myself explaining to other digital marketers how app marketing compares to search engine marketing. In this post, let’s compare and contrast how to think about marketing your app with an eye toward comparing it to your current search engine marketing knowledge.

Compare Implementation Time

It takes minimal effort to write your first 95 character keyword ad, design a landing page, and start your first promotion using self-service tools provided by Google.

Mobile app development and promotion can be done on a low budget, but it is definitely more complex than launching a search marketing campaign. Third-party app building tools like those from BuildAnApp allow you to build an app for free ($49 to remove banner ads). Once you build an app, there are self-service mobile ad vendors like AdMob, Millenial Media, Jumptap, and InMobi that allow you to acquire traffic quickly.

Compare Pricing Approaches

Search campaigns are priced using cost per click (CPC). App campaigns are priced using cost per install (CPI), cost per click (CPC), and cost per impression (CPM).

CPC rates are all over the board depending on how competitive the search term is and the quality score. For app campaigns, free casual games dominate the top 25 percent in performance, typically having the highest click-through and conversion rate (often two times higher than other free apps). Their conversion rates range from 3 percent to 18 percent (small banner sizes tend to perform lower).

The CPC rate, for free iOS apps in the U.S., is typically $0.05 to $0.30 per click. The cost-per-install for the top performing free games generally backs out to $0.75 to $3.00 per U.S. iOS install for CPC and CPM placements on top ad networks.

The general rule is that if you are looking to achieve any meaningful scale, you should be satisfied with purchasing free U.S. app installs any time they are performing at $1.00 or less.

All of the above figures are for non-incentivized ad placements. Incentivized ad placements are very popular as they can help achieve a higher ranking in the app store and drive meaningful, predictable installs to the app. These app campaigns are priced using cost per install with rates ranging from $0.40 to $0.75 per U.S. install.

Every digital marketer knows what you are saying when you talk about a CPC campaign. Google made cost-per-click advertising famous. Google’s mobile display ad network, AdMob, is continuing what Google did in search and offers CPC pricing for most of their campaigns. This does not work as well for mobile developers. Larger advertisers are typically using CPC ad networks as backfill to the cost-per-install networks (with incentives and without incentives). The top cost-per-install ad networks will reach saturation after multiple campaigns leading to less volume available for a particular app. To maintain effective scale with each subsequent campaign an advertiser will begin to buy more installs from other sources such as CPC networks.

Compare the Landing Page

The landing page is very important in optimizing both SEM and app marketing campaigns.

In SEM, Raquel Hirsch of Wider Funnel advises that with optimization you can lift your conversion rates by as much as 277 percent.

In mobile, what users see when they get to your app store listing is crucial to whether or not they will download your app. For app store submission, prioritize and optimize in the following order for the most impact to your app ranking: icon, name, screenshots, and description. Here are several tips:

• Icon: Make it easy to recognize and tie to your game. Consistent use is also important. The small app icon and the large icon should be visually equivalent. Be careful of trademark violations. Build in a vector-based drawing app to allow for easy resizing.
• Name: Describe the utility of the game in its name. Avoid special characters. Don’t use “device” in the name, like iPhone or iPad.
• Screenshots: Use common sense, take time to capture the images that best depict your app. Never use imagery of the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, as they will ensure automatic rejection.
• Description: The first two lines of a description are the most important. Ensure they accurately communicate the app’s value. Use simple, concise words to demonstrate the features in the app. Match your tone to the app experience. Include copy to enhance your credibility. Never include pricing. Maximize the use of copy above the fold (before the “more” button). You are limited to three lines; lines are made up of 120 characters and then they word wrap. Watch out so when the line wraps, you don’t lose precious real estate. In the description, try using shorter lines (less than 120 characters) and a space between them for more readability. Be aware of how word wrap works on the iPhone screen, as many apps are being installed through the iPhone. Long lines can make the text look weird. Do your research. It will pay off with higher conversions.

Compare Conversion vs. Engagement

Search performs for digital marketers because the Web is transactional in nature. It drives a conversion.

When people are sitting in front of their computer, they can easily fill in the required fields in a transaction because they can easily navigate between their keyboard and their mouse.

Keying a transaction in a mobile device is very difficult and, therefore, conversion rates on any kind of complex transaction are going to be low. Mobile apps perform best when they are created with the goal of engaging users, not for converting users to some kind of a transaction. Once the user is engaged, you will find the best transaction possible is using in-app purchases because the native payment platform simplifies the purchasing process.

Consider How Top Search Marketers Use Apps

“PriceGrabber has a family of mobile apps (for the iPhone, iPad, and Android) that allow users to search via a mobile device just as they would in front of a desktop using PriceGrabber.com,” says Mindy Ferguson, senior director, application development, PriceGrabber. “For our mobile apps success is measured by ranking and number of downloads, but more importantly, from the feedback we receive from our user base as it was their word of mouth that pushed our apps to the top of the iTunes charts.”

Both search engine marketing and app marketing have a place in most digital marketers’ advertising mix. Those who have developed a strong expertise in search engine marketing are able to draw upon their expertise as they develop and implement their app marketing strategy.

Rob Weber, Vice President of Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over ten, profitable years evolving W3i in the consumer application industry.

According to Gigaom, “When Apple began allowing free apps to include in-app purchases a little over a year ago, it opened the door for freemium models to flourish.” True. But why?

The blog published earlier this week that an incredible number of top grossing apps are free, 34 out of 100 (on the day they looked) to be exact. The co-founder of analytics firm Distimo seconded the incredible revenue growth from freemium apps, stating that the app industry is “seeing more developers implement more in-app purchases especially with games,” says Remco van den Elzen.

The real story here isn’t the power of a freemium business model; it’s been around a long time. Freemium is a model that in 1865 helped King Gillette distribute his safety razor. The story isn’t even in-app purchases. Some of the free apps that offer in-app purchases are offering access to the full game as the in-app purchase. In other words they ditch the “lite versions” in lieu of a free app with an in-app purchase to the full game, usually on a level by level basis.

The real story is the mega-growth projected in the world of virtual currency, or consumable goods ($2 billion + in 2011). Looking at the top grossing apps today (November 12, 2010) 37 out of 100, are free. Of those, more than three quarters offer in-app purchases classified as consumable goods.  Simply put, virtual goods are driving  revenues behind 75% of the top grossing free apps.  Sounds like a winning business strategy, no?

The legal notice that users now see when they go to the LimeWire website sends a pretty strong message: “Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.” After a four year long battle, a New York judge finally put the kibosh on LimeWire’s lackadaisical methods for policing its peer-to-peer free music service. The industry has been in an uproar over the under-the-counter music that’s making its way into users’ headphones at the hands of LimeWire.  High profile labels are left to sit back and say, “Show me the money!” with multi-millions in damage claims. In the meantime, millions of users are left searching for a new source for free music.

The recent federal court order requiring LimeWire to cease distribution of its software is a boon to those who own the rights to many of the shared files.  While they did not receive a big check as back payment, they did get the satisfaction of seeing that their collective voices are being heard. Chalk up a small victory for copyright law.

The social media world is buzzing with news of the shut down as LimeWire users gradually become aware they no longer have access to their free music source. It has been suggested in numerous circles that people will discover a new means of getting the music they want for free. But, with this new crack down on piracy, it is wise to avoid sources that are less than reputable and dabble in the copyright infringement game.

The solution to LimeWire users’ dilemma is to utilize an alternative that takes a lawful approach to free music downloads. One legit player in the market is Music Oasis, owned and operated by W3i, who works directly with the artists and labels. These partnerships are legally defined through license agreement, thus making Music Oasis an exciting white hat option for discovering new artists and titles.  As the Music Oasis inventory of fresh, new music continues to grow, more users are finding it a refreshing change.  Moreover, Music Oasis is spyware and virus free since the download is done through InstallIQ, which is certified in the TRUSTe Trusted download program  which generates a level of security that file sharing companies like LimeWire have struggled to provide.

Is the free legal music download the wave of the future now that peer to peer file sharing has taken a mighty swat to the hand? Or, will we see more artists raising their collective fists in frustration as new players move in to take LimeWire’s place in the dark alley of infringement?

Randi Kucala, Marketing Specialist, W3i, LLC
A proponent for Internet users, Randi endeavors to make every interaction with W3i’s sites a positive one. She specializes in copy writing and on-page SEO.

This is part two of a three part series unpacking data from inside the W3i network, offering insights on browser use, browsing habits and engagement factors. In Part one, we identified state by state browser usage between Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Default Browser Use

Internet Explorer has the default browser world pretty locked up. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering IE is the default on Windows machines. W3i data shows that of Firefox browser users, 81.60% have Firefox set as their default browsers and Chrome retains about 75.84% as default compared to Internet Explorer active users where about 65.62% maintain IE as a default

Locking in the default browser setting is key to winning and retaining the crown in the browser war.

Changing Tide?

While it may seem intuitive that IE would hold the title of Default Browser King, Firefox continues to show its viability. In mid-summer 2010, IBM mandated it’s nearly 400,000 employees have Firefox as their default browser. Bob Sutor, Vice President of Open Source and Linux at IBM’s Software group said in a blog post about the mandate that “While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be.” It would follow, that there is an indication that Firefox continues to gain ground. The IBM announcement came around the time that IE reversed a year-long slide in usage also indicating the fickleness of the market.

Meanwhile, in the world of tech

There is one market segment that seems to be a black sheep in the browser family. Business Insider released numbers that indicate in the tech set, Google Chrome has surpassed Firefox now owning 34% market share of a tech savvy niche market(note* this is active use, not default browser settings). That eclipse happened this fall and also serves as an indicator that consumers’ browsing habits are a rich world of variation.

Final Thoughts

What the data shows is a rich world of browser preference based on market segment. For broad use, Internet Explorer still reigns supreme. However, both Firefox and Chrome are proving their ability to move the needle and that they are worth a review when developing add-ons, applications and toolbars. Both Firefox and Chrome retain high default usage among their active browser users.

In our final installment of The Browser Wars series we’ll take a look at user retention and engagement through add-ons, toolbars and applications based on browser use and identify which browser has highly engaged users when it comes to using enhanced features.

All this week we’ll be digging into the W3i data mine providing research pertaining to browser use and browsing habits of users based on browser and how all this data plays into increasing market awareness for brands looking to utilize desktop tool bars or add-ons. We’ll end the week unpacking user engagement trends on two top browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Not shockingly, Internet Explorer continues to hold a strong market share across the United States. What is interesting is the statistical differences in outliers like Minnesota where IE’s share is only 50%. What the data indicates are weak spots in the IE market that Firefox can work to erode increasing their own share there. In southern states, IE holds a slight, yet consistently higher market share than in coastal states.

For Firefox to gain ground it looks like their best bet is to tap into the markets that provide outliers and expand strategy from there to neighboring states and regions.

These numbers aren’t necessarily groundbreaking, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Internet Explorer is the most used browser, but data shows an interesting trend in default browser settings, and even more interesting, the browsing habits of consumers using the two.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the Default Browser Setting battle in The Browser Wars, Part two.

For now, what do you feel are contributing factors to browser selection and use, sound off below on that question or anything else brought up in Part 1.

Where are the top three places you spend your time, I imagine your list looks like this:  work, in bed and in the car.

Regardless of which one of those three locations you’re at, applications are a touch, flick or wipe away.

With the killer success of App Stores, apps for handheld devices clearly are on fire. But what does the future look like for apps in cars coupled with car electronics and who’s in the game?

Who better to get the answers from then the CEO behind one of the most successful auto apps in the Apple AppStore, Pete Tenereillo. Pete is the CEO of Trapster, an auto app that is consistently in the top two spots in “Navigation” for the App Store.

Rob Weber, the co-founder and Vice President of Business Development for W3i got a chance to chat with Pete at the iPhone/iPad DevCon 2010 in San Diego to discuss app distribution to cars.

Pete says there are three key players in the game of in car apps. OEM Systems who build navs and try to sell them as a “part” for your Mercedes, Chevy etc.–like OnStar, AcDelco and Uniden. Think back to the OnStar campaign, “standard on every new Chevy.” The app came as is on the Chevy.

Car manufacturers are also in the game doing their own thing, but for them they just want access to the app to rebrand and repackage it. Finally you have aftermarket folks like Pioneer where  consumers buy them after they own the car to be installed on their car.

“Most of the next generation OEM and aftermarket supplier nav systems seem to be based on Android, while many car manufacturers are building proprietary connected nav systems based on either standard or proprietary technology,” says Tenereillo.

Tenereillo still contends that users will only want to download apps to one device, a phone or tablet, which can then be docked in a vehicle. The apps would run from the device, rather than be stored in the vehicle.  This seems to be the way Samsung also thinks the market for in car apps will go, their new tablet will also feature in car docking accessories.

“There is another whole school of thought in connected nav systems, where the car simply becomes a UI for what’s already on the phone, clearly voice commands, and maybe even heads-up display at some point,” Tenereillo says.

In the end, all of the players are facing competition from apps like Google Nav on the Droid

Ford seems to be muscling their way into the game after their announcement at CTIA 2010, that they’re inviting more development for car apps.  Where will the auto/app world move to next? Having apps on one device is important, but cost is the biggest factor, sound off below.