We took this ancient idea and incorporated it into our mobile multiplayer games and it has been so well received that it surprised even us. We brought in a great impersonator who did some parody recordings of Stewie from Family Guy, Hank Hill, Christopher Walken, and funny personalities. They turned out absolutely hysterical. When you sink someone’s battleship in Fleetmaster you can tell them exactly how bad they are, when someone makes an obvious blunder in Blast4 you can laugh at them, and you can do it in some of the funniest voices around. I have found it particularly funny when you know the other player has not updated yet and has no idea where these jeers are coming from.

Users can hit the "Chat" button in any game to send an audio taunt

We also added the foundation for our avatar system in this update. Users can select from a wide variety of avatars to represent themselves in the games by setting the avatar from the dashboard. This part of the 2.2.537 update represents the baseline entry point for our avatar system. We plan to release additional functional updates to the avatar system in the coming months that make it possible to customize your avatar to a much greater degree, including customizations unlocked based on achievement.

The final portion of this update is the credit system that allows the user to obtain credits to unlock taunts and avatars. We implemented a credit system that allowed us to stay true to our goal of making every aspect of the games free to the end-user. Instead of releasing this content as an in-app purchase or paid upgrade, we were able to allow users to download free applications and obtain credits after running the application one time. Players can now obtain all of the content in the entire game absolutely free, this was incredibly important to us. We are totally dedicated to keeping our games completely free for our players.

Select a free app and run it once to get credits

We are very happy with the end result and the very warm reception that this update has received. A big “THANK YOU” to everyone who plays our games. We want all of our players to now that we listen to you diligently attempt to improve your experience every step of the way.

Just over two weeks after the release of Fleetmaster & Blast4 (our free multiplayer games that we released using Apple’s Game Center framework) the games have done an incredible 350,000 downloads. Strangely enough the vast majority of those downloads have come from outside of the United States and predominantly from European countries.

The American iPod/iPhone users have always been troublesome, largely because of the very young average age of the iPod gamers and app users. It very common to see cases where a paid version of an application, nearly identical to the free version, has much better reviews. At-any-rate it has been my experience that European and Asian mobile users pick up all the new stuff much more quickly than their American counterparts. They were first to the text game, first to the mobile application party, and now the first to appreciate true mobile multiplayer gaming.

In my observations I have also seen that a lot of “more complex” games seem to do a lot better outside the US. I think this goes back to the demographics of the user but also says something else. I predict that more complex games (in terms of functionality, depth of story line, user interface, etc.) will eventually become predominant and overtake the Angry Birdsesque casual games. We have seen this evolution in arcade gaming, console gaming, and PC gaming and I see no reason why we won’t see it again in the mobile gaming vertical. I’m not knocking Angry Birds, everyone in the company loves it, in fact I applaud them for doing an incredible job. Developers make games for the marketplace, Angry Birds was obviously a job well done.

Developers on new platforms start our their evolutionary life cycles hampered by hardware constraints, participate in the “look prettier than the other guy” arms race generally fueled by graphics and processing hardware advances, realize they sacrificed game play focusing on being the “prettiest game on the block” (and pay the financial price for such a realization), and then settle out to a happy medium producing all-around good games.

We are very pleased with the success of Fleetmaster & Blast4 and big thanks to all of our users out there, we hope you have as much fun playing our games as we have making them. We will follow up with some detailed usage stats soon.

“The Joel Comm Show” has returned, and will now be broadcast each Wednesday at 12 PM Eastern on WebmasterRadio.FM. The show will cover a wide range of topics including traffic generation, using social media effectively, site monetization, Web 2.0 issues, mobile technology, and more. Whether you are a die-hard fan of Joel’s show or are just tuning in, make sure to check it out on Wednesdays, as it will certainly have information that will help you to boost your business and answer your questions.

Can’t watch it live? Check it out in the iTunes store or on-demand in the WebmasterRadio.FM archives inside the Internet Marketing Channel.

Apple just announced the addition of a native advertising platform for the new iPhone, iPod, and iPad OS 4.0. The people running AdMob over at google  must be trembling in their boots this very second. AdMob has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and was just purchased by Google for $750 million, almost exclusively on the iPhone advertising market share. That is all gone now.

Apple’s advertising platform is incredible and runs completely in HTML 5. The ads are incredibly smooth and function almost like an application in themselves. They have access to certain frameworks for use by applications as well such as location and accelerometer access.  In short, Apple’s new advertising platform offers an entire world of wonder that AdMob (or any other 3rd party platform) cannot even dream of.

What does this mean for publishers and advertisers? It appears to mean that mobile advertising just went pro. Advertisers can serve ads based on location and make them fully interactive. Publishers might finally actually make some real money! As for AdMob and all of the other platforms in the market that have been securing funding based on speculation, this looks to me like the end of the road.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions for this particular quote simply because they are easy to draw. Here it is:

 ”We do not have any plans to become a worldwide ad agency. We tried to buy a company called admob, and Google came in and snatched them from us.”  - Steve Jobs

The new advertising platform is being released for use by developers as this article is being written and will be available via the new OS to end-users this summer.

When we turned on the exchange functionality previously, our revenues went down, and we got a ridiculously small number of downloads after testing several ad copy versions. We left the exchange turned off until about a week ago. This time after we turned it on we started to see a drastic increase in revenue due to the fact that we started receiving dramatically larger numbers of CPM impressions from the network. The downloads were still amazing low, to the tune of about 6 downloads/150,000 impressions, but our CPM revenue is up well over 1000% gradually over the course of about 6 days.

I am personally at a loss as to why this might happen. I have no idea how turning on exchange impressions could tick something in the formula that would start serving us more CPM ads or if there was some kind of human intervention either from the network or advertisers. Of course there is the chance that it could be a complete coincidence so we will rinse and repeat to check that out as well.

If you happen to have any insight or inside information that might shed some light on the mysterious AdMob numbers that we discuss from time-to-time please feel free to leave a comment.

[UPDATE -iFart now in Android Marketplace]

Whether or not you know of iFart, we have had a ton of fun developing the little novelty app and have began porting iFart to Android. We realize that there are imitators on the marketplace already, but we also realize that we have attained mobile fart dominance and no other fart app stands a chance (just a hint of humor).

At InfoMedia, we have been investing in mobile very heavily over the last few years.  I’ll explain this in more detail in a upcoming article discussing some of the governing dynamics of mobile application development & marketing.

One of the things that we must do in order to fulfill needs created by our specific strategy is to quickly deliver our flagship applications to all major mobile hardware and software platforms. Currently we plan to port applications from the iPhone/iPod platform to Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and we are investigating Palm Pre.

iFart began the journey to the Android Marketplace about two weeks ago and is moving along nicely.  I can’t say when we will see fit to release the Android version, but I will say next quarter is realistic. iFart is the perfect candidate to get our feet wet in the Android SDK, and also a great opportunity to experience the specifics of the Android Marketplace.

This is the point where someone steps in and asks “Wouldn’t it be more profitable to release more iPhone applications?”  When making decisions regarding developing for various mobile platforms the common practice is too attempt to determine how much initial profit can be made in direct sales. I would argue that commonly a critical factor is left out of the calculation. The target demographic.

The last thing I will say regarding stuff I will cover in a near future article is this: Failing to develop for a particular platform at this stage of the game because “there’s no money in it” is a mistake. Whether or not a platform takes off, the people that download applications from other failing distribution channels are likely to make the move to the platforms that survived natural selection process. Guess what, they will probably download more apps! Draw your own conclusions until next time.

Case #1: Where’s the Clicks?

In testing we setup several external landing pages and some basic ads to looks at the analytics. What we found was pretty scary in this world where numbers mean everything. Of the clicks we paid for we only saw about 60% of them actually ever hit the page at all. After a few variations of all settings we came to the conclusion that the vast majority of the missing clicks were “misclicks” on the device and the user closed the mobile safari window before it actually loaded the page, thus we pay for the clicks but the analytics pixel on the page never fires because the page does not load.

This is obviously a huge problem and many factors contribute to this case. Developers are far from mastering the mobile user interface, bad interfaces and bad ad placements will result in misclicks on a system with so little real estate available in the UI.

Another contributing factor is that AdMob advertisers cannot target specific mobile sites or applications for ad delivery, this means that you cannot filter out the sites or apps sending “misclicks” or bad traffic in general.

In summary AdMob must allow advertisers to target and filter the applications and sites that display their ads. In addition AdMob must develop better controls to protect against click fraud, misclicks, and other types of generally bad traffic.

Case #2: Demographic Targeting

Before I start in on this topic I want to give AdMob some credit for their SDK. Software developer kits are a rarity in the Internet advertising and marketing scene as a whole and we were particularly happy to work with it, great code, great documentation, great functionality.

Unfortunately the functionality that the SDK provides us as a developer seems to have little point in the end. The main advantage provided application publishers in the SDK is the ability to provide AdMob demographic and location data for the individual user under the auspicious that AdMob will return highly targeted advertisements for that individual prospect.

Through testing we have seen absolutely no evidence that this data is being used to deliver more relevant advertising in any regard. As we are both a publisher and an advertiser in AdMob I know that there are very little targeting options at all in the advertiser interfaces. There are some great device and location options but nothing for demographics. I suspect the missing ad targeting is the result of a lack of advertisers able to benefit from the targeting and deficiencies in the AdMod software that returns targeted ads dynamically.

Case #3: The Impression Exchange

I love the idea and thinking behind the impression exchange feature that AdMob recently launched. The impression exchange allows publishers to exchange advertising impressions in their applications. I find it peculiar that they enabled it by default in our portal for one of our apps but I understand why they did. Without any impressions in the exchange there is nothing to exchange, the default enable looked like a vehicle to help the exchange reach critical mass and have value sooner.

As I said I really like the idea of being able to back fill my inventory with exchange impressions and even trade out the lowest paying impressions for exchange impressions but in this case the bottom line is that currently it just flat out didn’t get us any results. We saw no noticeable download increases after switching our entire inventory over to the exchange for several days to test. On top of that there is no reporting to facilitate the exchange, it just lumps your exchange clicks in with your overall clicks. You cannot tell your exchange clicks from any other type of click and in this case the total number of clicks went down dramatically even after optimizing the ad text line and graphic.

In Short

AdMob is is leading the way in a very young industry and they deserve credit for overcoming the obstacles that they have overcome to get to this point. The ideas and philosophies behind the platform are right on in my opinion but the immaturity of the industry and lack of attention to critical details hinder the system in it’s current form.

We will continue to use AdMob and continue to test new and existing features but we are making plans to keep the doors open for other solutions. We are currently working on new internal mobile adserver technologies that will give us a layer sitting above AdMob and other providers so that we can dynamically insert and rotate other networks and advertisers with the AdMob inventory.

AdMob is a great way to get a little extra cash out of a free application and if you need downloads to jump start new applications it is one of the few ways to get them. With $350 million in new funding from Sequoia I expect to see improvements in the areas of concern I covered in this article, how fast that might happens is anyone’s guess.

Apple forces the Wi-Fi restriction on iPhone software developers but most speculate this is because of pressure from carriers that sell the iPhone and provide service for it. AT&T’s top public policy executive Jim Cicconi was recently quoted as saying, “We absolutely expect our vendors [Apple in this case] not to facilitate the services of our competitors. Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile. Skype has no obligation to market AT&T services. Why should the reverse be true?”

Apple has yet to make a comment on the issue because the ability of VOIP apps like Skype to use the 3G network could greatly increase the utility of a device like the iPhone, possibly increasing sales.

There has been a lot of concern about the issue since the opening of the iPhone App Store, but the release of Skype has finally caused action to be taken. An internet advocacy group called Free Press has asked the FCC to investigate whether or not this practice is a violation of federal law. In the letter Free Press asks the commission to clarify if wireless internet service falls into under the same policy standards as traditional broadband internet. The letter cites restrictions on Google Android phones using T-Mobile’s network in addition to the iPhone Skype restrictions.

The FCC released an Internet Policy Statement in 2005 with guidelines on how they will regulate the internet. The policy states that, “To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run application and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.” This isn’t a blanket net neutrality law, but allows the FCC to enforce a neutral internet on a case by case basis. In 2005 the FCC enforced this policy on Madison River Communications for blocking VOIP services over their DSL lines. Madison River was ordered to stop the practice and pay a $15,000 fine to the FCC. This precedent implies that if wireless internet services are categorized under the same policy as traditional broadband then AT&T will have to allow Skype on their network.

Skype has also caused a stir in Europe where T-Mobile, Apple’s iPhone distributor in Germany, has said that in addition to not allowing Skype on their 3G network they will also be banning it on their Wi-Fi hotspot network. T-Mobile Germany has threatened to cancel the accounts of anyone who tries to work around these restrictions. In response a coalition of companies including Skype, Microsoft, and Intel have asked the European Union to enact policy to protect the consumer’s right to use any application they please.

Despite the restrictions there are numerous reports around the internet of hacked iPhones being able to use Skype on AT&T’s 3G network without any problems. This would indicate that network capacity isn’t an issue.

The impact of the FCC and EU’s decision on this issue could have far reaching implications on the future of mobile development as a whole, not just VOIP. A decision will determine what usage restrictions mobile carriers can put on their networks, possibly impacting peer-to-peer applications, video streaming, online gaming, and other applications.