comScore Reports November 2009 German Mobile Market Share

Nearly One-Third of Germany’s 51 Million Mobile Subscribers used a Mobile App in November 2009

comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni To Speak at M-Days Conference in Germany on January 28

LONDON, U.K., January 26, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the German mobile phone industry over the three month period between August and November 2009. The report ranked the leading mobile device families and operating systems in Germany, as well as the most popular forms of content and activity accessed via mobile device. The report found Nokia to be the most popular brand of handset with a 35.4 percent market share, while its Symbian operating system continues to lead among smartphones with a 58.5 percent market share.

Mobile Device Market Share
A total of 51 million people aged 13 and older in Germany used mobile devices in November 2009. Device manufacturer Nokia was once again the preferred handset choice of more than one third of German mobile phone users, accounting for 35.4 percent of total German mobile devices, up 0.3 percentage points versus three months prior. Sony Ericsson ranked second with a 22.0 percent share, followed by Samsung (15.0 percent share), Motorola (8.6 percent share) and Siemens (5.4 percent share).

Smartphone Operating Systems Market Share
Nokia-owned Symbian was the leading mobile smartphone operating system in Germany in November 2009 with a 58.5 percent share of German smartphone devices. Microsoft ranked second with 18.4 percent share, followed by Apple with 15.2 percent share (up 1.7 percentage points), RIM with 6.1 percent share, and Google with 1.4 percent share.

Mobile Content Usage
In November 2009, 81.0 percent of German mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up one percentage point from three months prior. With the advancement in mobile handset technology and mass availability of affordable data plans, an increasing number of German mobile subscribers are now accessing the Internet via their phones, which was reflected by 31.0 percent of the total German mobile subscriber base accessing an application in November 2009, 14.8 percent using a browser to access the Internet and 4.9 percent accessing social networking sites.

*Applications describe all kinds of applications and games whether they connect to the Internet or not.
** Internet Access via Applications or Browser

Here is Moore's important insight in one sentence: "Don't celebrate your victory in a market after becoming the market leader with pioneer consumers; as the mass market develops and all the competitive offerings have adequate performance, the new consumers won't care about the advanced features that your organization is exquisitely tuned to produce but rather ease of setup, ease of use, and low cost."

Philip Greenspun @ Crosssing the Chasm

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Additional Resources: Twitter: BI_CodecSys Facebook: Broadcast International 

Highlighted comments include:

·         Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

·         Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.

·         Five years is a factor of ten in Moore´s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.

·         Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

·         "We're starting to make signifigant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video.

·         "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."

·         There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.

·         "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"

·         It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

There's lots more in the full 45 minutes of Schmidt's interview, including a statement that a Google OS Netbook will be here in 2010, with HTML5 local caching for offline use

Ad Networks and Exchanges, participants of ‘The 2nd Channel’, are the fastest growing segments of online advertising, fueled by an ecosystem that is driving rapid innovation. This report, that came out on the 8th of October during AdRevenue09 in New York, shows brand new quantitative and qualitative data from in the in-depth interviews with top executives in the Industry.

DOWNLOAD [8MB]

Im aktuellen EIAA Mediascope Europe Spotlight III standen die Online-Aktivitäten und das Internetnutzungsverhalten der 16 bis 24-Jährigen im Mittelpunkt. Die Zahl der wöchentlichen Nutzer des Internets ist europaweit seit 2004 um 27 Prozent auf 90 Prozent der befragten Altersgruppe gestiegen. Deutschland belegt dabei mit einer Quote von 95 Prozent einen Spitzenplatz unter den europäischen Ländern.

Die digitale Jugend Europas verbringt laut der Umfrage durchschnittlich 14,8 Stunden im Netz. Auch hier gehört Deutschland mit einer Nutzungsdauer von 15,9 Stunden zur Spitze. Dabei steht für 84 Prozent der europäischen Jugend der E-Mail-Verkehr im Vordergrund, gefolgt von sozialen Netzwerken (67 Prozent), Instant Messaging (61 Prozent) sowie dem Schauen von Filmen und Videoclips (52 Prozent). Die Prioritätenliste der deutschen Jugend wird mit 94 Prozent von der Nutzung von Suchdiensten angeführt. Auf den Plätzen folgen mit 93 Prozent der E-Mail-Verkehr, soziale Netzwerke (77 Prozent), die Erstellung eines sozialen Netzwerkprofils (75 Prozent) und schließlich das Instant Messaging mit 64 Prozent.

Die meistbesuchten Websites in Deutschland widmeten sich den Bereichen Nachrichten (68 Prozent), Film (65 Prozent), lokale Informationen (57 Prozent) und Musikangeboten (56 Prozent). 82 Prozent der jungen deutschen Internetnutzer besitzen einen Breitbandanschluss, wovon 57 Prozent drahtlos im Netz surfen. 85 Prozent der Nutzer haben laut der Umfrage Waren und Dienstleistungen im Durchschnittswert von 448 Euro im Internet bestellt.

Die von der EIAA (European Interactive Advertising Association), dem Branchenverband pan-europäischer Online-Vermarkter und Technologiedienstleister, in Auftrag gegebene Studie "Mediascope Europe 2008" befragt jährlich Internetnutzer in ganz Europa.

Semantisches Targeting ist eine Onlinewerbeform, die es ermöglicht, Anzeigen gezielt in einem relevanten Umfeld zu platzieren. Mit linguistischen Mitteln scannt und analysiert es den gesamten Text einer Webseite und versteht somit den Sinnzusammenhang auch im Umfeld sogenannter polysemer und homonymer Begriffe, von Wörtern also, die mehrere Bedeutungen haben.

Beim semantischen Advertising erkennen die Adserver automatisch und in Echtzeit Bedeutung und Hauptthemen einer Webseite, um entsprechend dazu passende Werbemittel ausliefern zu können. Zu diesem Zweck werden sämtliche Begriffe einer Seite betrachtet und ihre Kombination und Relevanz mithilfe eines komplexen Algorithmus analysiert. Der Adserver greift dabei auf eine riesige taxonomisch aufgebaute Datenbank mit sämtlichen Wortbedeutungen, Redewendungen und wichtigen Eigennamen zurück und kann so bestimmen, ob es zum Beispiel in einem Artikel über David Beckham in erster Linie um Fußball, Mode und Lifestyle, Promiklatsch oder eine Kombination aus alldem geht. Eine derartige Klassifikation kann von sehr allgemein (zum Beispiel Sport oder Mode) bis sehr speziell (zum Beispiel US-Fußball oder Herrenschuhe) reichen, wodurch sowohl sehr feines als auch grobes Targeting möglich ist. Zudem erlaubt semantisches Advertising auch die Identifikation kontroverser oder schockierender Inhalte, wodurch versprochen wird, markenschädigende Werbeumfelder umgehen zu können, etwa Katastrophenmeldungen oder vulgärsprachliche Diskussionen bei an sich passenden Themen.

Semantisches Targeting erhebt somit den Anspruch, Werbetreibenden folgende Vorteile zu bieten:

Thematische Relevanz von Werbung steigert die Akzeptanz der User. So werden Streuverluste minimiert und die Performance einer Kampagne optimiert. Lächerliche, peinliche oder skandalöse Platzierungen durch Fehlinterpretation des thematischen Zusammenhangs einer Webseite werden vermieden. Gezieltere Ansprache der vermuteten Zielgruppe durch die Möglichkeit sehr präzisen oder sehr allgemeinen thematischen Targetings, je nach Kampagnenziel und Kundenwünschen; gegebenenfalls auch kombinierbar mit anderen Targeting-Methoden wie etwa regionalem Targeting.

Vielfältige und effektive Optimierungsmöglichkeiten im Laufe der Kampagne.

Im Gegensatz zum Keyword-Advertising, bei dem lediglich einzelne Wörter identifiziert werden, ist sich semantisches Targeting der Mehrdeutigkeit vieler Wörter bewusst und erkennt zudem den Sinnzusammenhang vermeintlich eindeutiger Wörter, die aber in negativem Kontext stehen können oder eine so untergeordnete Rolle spielen, dass sie für den Sinn an sich irrelevant sind. So kann bei Keyword-Targeting-Ansätzen Werbung für Autos neben einem Bericht über eine Massenkarambolage mangels Verständnis für den Gesamtzusammenhang erscheinen, auch wenn das Wort „Auto“ korrekt identifiziert wurde. Der Anspruch des semantischen Targetings ist es, in einem solchen Fall zum Beispiel Verkehrsunfälle oder Notärzte als Thema eines derartigen Berichts zu erkennen und die Auslieferung somit zu unterbinden. Mehrdeutige Begriffe werden anhand der semantischen Umgebung disambiguiert und für den Sinn weniger relevante Wörter als solche erkannt.

Beim Behavioural Targeting wird angenommen, dass das Interesse eines Users in der Vergangenheit mit seinem gegenwärtigen Interesse gleichzusetzen ist. Semantisches Targeting hingegen verfolgt die Strategie, den User exakt in dem Moment anzusprechen, in dem er sich tatsächlich mit einem bestimmten Thema beschäftigt. Somit soll ausgeschlossen werden, den User zu spät mit einem bestimmten Thema zu erreichen oder in einem Moment, in dem er für das Thema nicht offen ist, auch wenn es ihn grundsätzlich nicht interessiert. Auch will man die rechtlichen Schwierigkeiten vermeiden, mit denen Behavioural Targeting häufiger konfrontiert wird, da es aufgrund der notwendigen Datenspeicherung und -analyse als invasiv wahrgenommen werden kann.

Auch beim Buchen auf kompletten Themen-Channels wird thematische Relevanz von Werbung angestrebt. Allerdings werden diese Themen sehr allgemein gefasst, so dass präzises Targeting und Optimierung kaum möglich sind. Außerdem gehen so auf multithematischen Webpages relevante und somit wertvolle Platzierungsmöglichkeiten verloren. Kleinere Website-Bereiche werden oft nicht berücksichtigt. [mehr auf wikipedia]

AdExchanger.com: How did Improve Digital begin?

Publishers are facing a shift in the online advertising ecosystem where performance campaigns, ad networks and exchanges are playing a more and more dominant role. In 2007, over 40 percent of the UK online advertising budget was spent through ad networks and exchanges - few people would argue with us if we stated that this number is higher today. Having worked for many large publishers in yield management and with extensive experience in ad operations, we were looking for an efficient way for publishers to manage these multiple revenue sources and create their optimal monetization mix. PubMatic’s ad revenue optimization technology combined with Improve Digital’s premium yield optimization technology (in beta) provides the answer, lifting revenues between 60 percent and 300 percent.

Today, 90 percent of our customers are in the premium segment, and include the largest newspaper and magazine publishers of the world. Our goals are closely aligned with those of publishers: increasing revenues from premium sales, ad networks, exchanges and performance campaigns while protecting the publisher’s brand and reducing efforts. Our typical client is looking to balance increasing revenues from discretionary inventory in harmony with growing revenues from their direct premium sales strategy.

What were the challenges in starting the business?

As we were the first to offer ad network optimization in Europe, our initial role was one of educating the market. However, publishers quickly recognized the benefits it offered them and embraced the concept, and ad networks optimization is now is an established practice.

So do you resell PubMatic's yield optimization services? How does that relationship work? Seems to make sense that Improve Digital would be bought by PubMatic in the future.

Improve Digital represents PubMatic’s ad revenue optimization platform exclusively in Europe, and has its own premium yield optimization technology in beta. The two technologies complement each other, enabling Improve Digital to offer premium publishers a full yield optimization solution. The two companies have a strong partnership, enabling them to work closely as a global team. Europe is a complex and fragmented market that requires in-depth local understanding of each region and this is a key element that Improve Digital brings to the table. At this point our focus is to extend our successful company into more markets .

What's your company's target market? Is it geographical?

Our target market are the premium publishers. In Europe, 90 percent of our publishers are premium ones that are seeking to monetize unsold ad space and balance this with their premium direct sales strategies. When it comes to ad network optimization, PubMatic and Improve Digital operate as one global company servicing the top publishers around the globe. Publishers benefit from local sales and service staff in Palo Alto, New York, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, and India. Our service team speaks over ten languages and we monetize ad space in over 275 different countries. For our premium yield optimization technology, we do not work with resellers and focus instead on providing our services directly and expanding our geographical reach.

Do you have any sense about the differences between U.S. and European publishers? Is the ad network more palatable to larger European pubs, for example?

The biggest challenge of working in Europe is probably that the markets are so diverse and the audience is highly fragmented. In each region different players are important and the attitude towards networks and exchanges varies enormously. In general the fragmentation of Europe has led to fewer ad networks of a certain volume in each market than there is in the US, however Europe is catching up rapidly. The differences in Europe are cultural, and servicing the resulting needs goes way beyond speaking the local language. Global or pan-European publishers might have central management, but the crux of their success lies with their regional offices, each of whom works with local partners to meet the needs specific to their local market. Each geographic region, each publisher, each website and each placement requires a different mix of networks. Only best-of-breed automated optimization combined with local service and market knowledge can make that happen.  That’s why we’re very excited about our unique strategy with PubMatic, where we combine the leading global technology platform with the best of local sales and service across Europe.  No other solution provider can match that.  As an example, PubMatic recently rolled out a global currency release that allows it to integrate into ad networks that report in any currency worldwide, convert that currency on the fly for optimization purposes, and then customize reporting to whatever currency the publisher prefers.

Does the yield optimization model eventually turn into an ad exchange? How do you see the model evolving?

We work with over 350 relevant networks and thousands of publishers, so we’re already among the largest global advertising platforms in the world. However, our key mission is to help publisher’s monetize their inventory by maximizing their yield and revenues. This makes us the number one partner for premium publishers in the industry. Exchanges are trading platforms, but publishers require significant service to help them with creative controls, brand management, billing, reconciliations with networks, etc.  PubMatic provides world-class service and technology.

What’s your value proposition for ad networks? Why wouldn’t ad networks go direct to the publishers?

We are able to connect networks instantly to a large pool of premium publishers in multiple markets in an efficient way. Our dynamic default technology ensures that networks no longer receive impressions they cannot, or do not want to monetize, resulting in higher CPM’s and happier publishers and networks.

How do you see the demand-side buying platforms affecting Improve Digital? At some point do you see agency buying platforms buying directly from Improve Digital?

The publisher decides which networks / platforms are able to buy their inventory. Our platform is agnostic in this sense and is able to connect to any platform or network. Sometimes connecting to these platforms can be highly beneficial, but at other times it is not, and that is a decision that in the end only the publisher can make. The objective is to create efficiencies for both the network and the publishers, and growing revenues for both parties.

What's your view on ad exchanges? What's the European perception? Are there still challenges around "brand safety" for example?

Brand safety is a huge issue in Europe and something that we help publishers to protect. With open exchanges it can sometimes be more challenging, but with our creative control technology, it is easy to manage – and eliminate - bad creatives. We recently launched a white paper to share our experience with the industry, and offer the do’s and don’ts to protect brand image.

Are you using PubMatic’s real-time bidding (RTB) offering on behalf of clients? Will RTB play an important role in Improve Digital’s future? Why or why not?

Real time bidding plays a key role in enabling a more efficient and dynamic advertising market and increases the revenues for both networks and publishers, but the decision to enable this always lies with the publisher.

For us real time bidding plays an important role in the future as there are great benefits for all parties involved – better ad quality for users, which improves the overall user experience, higher ROI for advertisers making them increase the budgets, and increased revenues and higher CPM’s for publishers.

Where's the larger part of additional revenue for publishers when working with a yield optimization company: workflow consolidation or getting paid the highest price possible by a collection of ad networks?

We bring publishers more money, because our real time self-learning technology is able to match the right view with the right network and campaign in a much more efficient way than any other system. Every 15 milliseconds the mix of ad networks is adjusted for that exact moment and placement. It will adjust for spikes and ebbs during the day or the week and it also finds the ideal network mix per placement. As a result, we see increases in revenue of between 60 percent and 300 percent. Straight-forward, central, multi-currency reporting and automated integration with over 350 local and international networks also generates an increase in revenues and saves publishers time and effort. The efficiencies in managing all parties involved also allows publishers to increase their focus on their premium sales.

Follow Janneke Niessen (@janneke_improve) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.