Parse grows even faster after Facebook acquisition

I’ve mentioned before that I think Parse is one of Facebook’s best acquisitions yet. So I love seeing articles like this. This was no “OMGPOP acquisition” — Parse has grown even faster at a 25% growth after the acquisition.

Parse’s value to Facebook is clear. They have such a great brand and mindshare with app developers. And that will lead to so many more app developers using Facebook social for their sign-in and eventually, once they get big enough, Facebook’s app install ads. Which is where Facebook is seeing the bulk of their mobile revenue growth. A growth that is crucial in the eyes of public investors.

By the way, can we take a second to appreciate that growth? eMarketer is out with a new forecast today that projects Facebook’s worldwide mobile ad revenue to top $2 billion this year. That’s from a revenue stream that didn’t even exist a few quarters ago. Pretty damn impressive.

It seems to me that this is native advertising as it should be. … The content is genuinely fun, just as it is fleeting and unobtrusive. … These are the sorts of native ad projects that help change some of the traditional polarity of the advertising and publishing relationship. This is where we really see marketers challenged by publishers on behalf of users to make their advertising more fun and engaging on the consumer’s terms.

MediaPost: Tumblr Brings Its Native Ad Format To Mobile

I tend to agree with this. Tumblr more than anyone else I’ve seen has nailed native brand advertising. The key is if they can keep challenging marketers like this (instead of taking the easier money).

(via david)

Source: strle

via 200 Million Strong! Some highlights: - Pandora streams 200 million songs before 10 a.m. every day - In March Pandora streamed 1.49+ billion hours of music - Listeners have personalized their stations with more than 25 billion thumbs - More than 140 million listeners have tuned in to Pandora on a mobile device “Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop.”
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via 200 Million Strong!

Some highlights:

- Pandora streams 200 million songs before 10 a.m. every day
- In March Pandora streamed 1.49+ billion hours of music
- Listeners have personalized their stations with more than 25 billion thumbs
- More than 140 million listeners have tuned in to Pandora on a mobile device

“Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop.”

Mobile App Deep Linking

Fred Wilson on Twitter’s new Cards platform and “mobile app deep linking”:

Twitter announced some new functionality in its Twitter Cards platform yesterday. At the top of the list is “mobile app deep linking”. Here’s how Twitter explains it: With mobile app deep-linking, users will be able to tap a link to either view content directly in your app, or download your app, depending on whether or not they have your app installed.

Fred is right. This is a big deal.

There is no doubt that this is the next phase of mobile app advertising. Deep linking opens up so many possibilities for app developers. Deep linking to specials on in-app purchases for games, that one photo in your favorite photo sharing app, a box score in ESPN, a specific product page in e-commerce apps, etc. The list goes on.

And app developers will pay up for these deep link capabilities because it will allow them to drive more real transactions and monetize much better.

It’s still early but good to see more being done here. Props to Twitter for pushing this forward.

To bring out a new technology for consumers first, you just had a very long road to go down to try to find people who actually would pay money for something.

And now all of a sudden you have got this global market of all these early adopters that have smartphones connected to the Internet, and they can just pick up their things and run with them.

- Marc Andreessen on the future of enterprise.

Goes back to the True Ventures article I shared a while back: Enterprise hasn’t just now gotten sexy, it’s been so for a while. It just ebbs and flows.

3 Charts That Show Where Mobile Advertising Is Going in 2013

I came across two great decks on mobile this week. One from Flurry’s Source13 conference, Mobile Outlook 2013. And the other from MoPub’s Q4 2012 Marketplace Report.

Here are the two charts from each that jumped out to me:

The takeaways for app developers are clear:

1. As more brand dollars switch over to mobile (mostly at the expense of print), the CPM rates are going to go up. If you’re doing paid user acquisition, be prepared to pony up higher rates to get users. Especially on tablets.

2. It’ll be worth it. There’s never been a better time for freemium business models on mobile, especially in gaming. ARPDAU levels are breaking new highs constantly. (e.g. Supercell pulling in $1mm per day)

2013 will be a big year for mobile advertising. And a huge part of that will be from app developers. This week Gartner released their annual forecast for mobile advertising, revising their projection for mobile ad revenues upward to $11.4 billion for the year. But as I mentioned to Eric Friedman over on Twitter, I think the potential is even larger. I think 2013 will be the year that mobile ad spends finally make big inroads to catch up on consumption time, a $20B opportunity in the U.S. alone according to Mary Meeker:

Come back in twelve months to see how wrong I am.

Behind Mark Pincus's Bid to Save Zynga

Mr. Gordon said Zynga had failed to prioritize mobile development and found that its online games didn’t easily translate to smartphones’ smaller screens. “Mobile turned out to be more different than anyone expected, in terms of monetization and also user experience,” he said.

Zynga has done pretty well with mobile, all things considered. They were just very late to the game. I think with these latest moves Mark Pincus is starting to right the ship correctly though.

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Highly recommend this podcast for anyone interested in mobile apps and moble gaming.

BYOT Episode 5: The business of mobile gaming