Saturday 24 July 2010

The opportunity of iAds

What do we think?
When iAds was launched earlier this year the Financial Times called me and asked what we thought about the announcement and it's impact on the industry. I said I was excited about the richness and simplicity and that I was convinced it would give the mobile advertising industry exactly what it needs in terms of strong backing (Apple) and setting a new industry benchmark.
Since then Apple has officially launched the product and sold inventory for about 40m USD so what do I think now? When should you use iAds?
iAds are fantastic in terms of attracting customers to engage with rich media. If you want guaranteed eye balls and engagement then iAds can be a great start. Especially now that media is excited about iAds and will write about it therefore generate positive PR.

Does iAds replace mobile apps?
In my opionion iAds replace mobile microsites and not apps. The advantage of apps compared to iAds are...
  1. Apps are available offline and iAds are not
  2. Apps can give you very low cost engagement per customer if you have a strong brand and/or concept, e.g. an app that costs 40k USD to develop and generates 100k downloads cost 0.4 USD per engagement vs 1 USD per click for iAds at the moment which would cost you 100k USD for the same engagement
How do you reach customers on other platforms such as Android and Blackberry?
Our expectation is that other mobile advertising platform providers such as Google and Microsoft will quickly follow with similar formats based on HTML5 and that mobile web and iAds will merge over time as the user experience will be almost exactly the same.

Posted by Magnus Jern CEO of Golden Gekko

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Golden Gekko continues to expand in Cambodia

Golden Gekko has been growing very rapidly over the last couple of years and we are currently expanding our operations in Cambodia, Spain, Sweden and UK with new markets soon to be announced. The Phnom Penh Post recently wrote about our recruitment workshops in Cambodia which is an excellent example of how we grow by mixing top international talent from all over the world with highly skilled local people in Cambodia to deliver amazing value to our customers and partners in Europe and North America. We will talk more about this in our blog over the next couple of weeks.

Read full article in the Phnom Penh Post

Thursday 8 July 2010

Golden Gekko quoted about iAd in NMA

In the latest issue of New Media Age Apple claims its iAd network is the best way to serve ads to the mobile app generation. Golden Gekko's CEO Magnus Jern was asked how he looks upon the hottest topic in digital advertising right now. Sean HArgrave writes "While many questions have been raised about the iAd platform, Magnus Jern, co-founder of app developer Golden Gekko, believes it represents an exciting opportunity. The company develops scores of iPhone apps every year, including for Universal Pictures and Yellow Pages, in many European countries outside the UK.

“For a developer it’s exciting to be able to add iAds to an app from within the developer kit and have good-looking, creative ads appear which don’t take the audience off to another page,” he says. “One downside is that it represents another format for brands and agencies to have to work with, but the positives of opening up in-app advertising outweigh this. We’ll certainly be using iAd.”

Read the full article... (you'll need an NMA subsribtion to be able to access the article)