AdMob: Admobed

by: Bena Roberts Friday, August 10th, 2007

Rating: how to burn USD 50 in 20 minutes

On Sunday, I spent USD 50 on my First AdMob Ad promotion www.gomonews.mobi. I paid by credit card and set up my ad campaign. I got an email after ten minutes saying, “your ad has been approved.” Then I got another email 20 minutes later saying that “your ad funds have finished”.

My initial reaction? What on earth. How did USD 50 worth of ad money get swallowed in 20 minutes. Then I remembered this is AdMob they are serving 5 billion ads a year and I write all the time about “what is the value”.

Then on Monday as I was recovering after being abused by someone called “AdMob Fan” (see story); I got a lovely email from Mr. Nicholas Cumisky – EMEA Account Director ADMob. Russell Buckley European Head of AdMob (aka (by the GoMo News girlies only)…. The BFG) had put him in touch with me to help me with the ad campaign. (We really appreciate it thank-you).

Nicholas wanted to help me manage my ad services to make them more effective and he pointed out what I had done wrong, how and where. I did record the conversation but not for broadcast I am going to write it up for Mobile Ads and 2.0 Analyst. But:

1. He did tell me how to make the campaign more effective
2. He did show me the best way to make my CPC work for me
3. He did refund me with USD 50 to try again and walked me through the ad-set up.
4. He was a switched on bloke that knew what he was talking about and pointed out that GoMo News is a B2B site not the traditional consumer site or advertiser that AdMob targets.
5. I have just run all the ads and let’s see now how long they last.

So what do we think?
If every advertiser got this kind of star treatment I am sure that AdMob will retain its status as world ad leader (or what ever else it is calling itself). The attention is great and I realise that actually doing and implementing a campaign is extremely simple. The problems come in only when consumers don’t know what they are doing and are not sure how to segment the market or ad selection by location, handset device type and service sector.

I have to admit - putting these things into practice shed huge light on the mobile advertising space.

My original CPC was set to USD 0.38 and I realise now why my funds depleted in minutes. Anyway – thank-you AdMob. I am going to monitor the results and report back. Although the initial results look much better (see picture).

Admobnewresults