“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Ryan Merket, CEO of AppStores, and find out about what these guys are up to. In a nutshell, this is what they’re offering.
“Appstores provides relevant and targeted app distribution by partnering with mobile website publishers.”
Their “How It Works” gives a bit more detail, saying:
“We are partnering with companies who have mobile websites. We determine based on the content of the website, the user, and the device type, which application to show (AdSense for apps). We have a number of different HTML5 ad units available and decide which to show based on device type and which is performing best for the publisher.”
What I liked most about my conversation with Ryan was his clear value proposition and obvious energy. The Appstores platform provides some very defined benefits:
- Lower than industry average CPA
- HTML5 to leverage mobile websites (as opposed to strictly other mobile apps)
To the first point, this is very important because as it currently stands, it is extremely hard to make the CPA model work for apps. I spent a long time wrestling with different models and could never make them work – they are designed for the larger players who invested into a deep long tail revenue model and can afford to pay up front. Appstores is liberalizing this market and bringing the price down by appealing to a greater pool and using better technology. Kudos.
Mobile Advertising is Big Business
It seems that everyone is talking about how big mobile is going to be in 2012 and beyond. What’s great about the Appstores model is that it’s built dynamically and can target mobile websites much more effectively than trying to ballpark the content of a native app. This is going to drive higher conversion and lower costs to the developers.
All in all, I like what these guys are doing and will look to integrate this into some of the larger projects I do as they become viable. If you’re looking to get into the mobile marketing, definitely keep these guys in mind.
To Ryan and team – Good luck!
Carter