Publishers Prefer iPhone to Facebook for Apps

December 24, 2009

 

 

 

To download the study referenced in this article please click here

A few Facebook stats to start us off:

• More than 350 million active users; more than 35 million users update their status each day
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 500,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
• More than 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external websites every month

Now, would you believe that the 100 or so publishers who answered the call to participate in a recent apps survey were even MORE likely to have developed an iPhone app than a Facebook App?

I'm not saying you should be developing for Facebook -- necessarily. Just that it's so inexpensive and easy to plug Facebook Connect into your OWN Website that even other social networking sites are doing it. It's turning Facebook into a kind of social operating system for those who are successful -- and the rest, like LinkedIn -- are using Twitter.

For a really fine installation of Facebook Connect, check out what TVGuide.com has done with the "favorite TV show" field. If I'm not mistaken, you can add fields too; they just may not been seen on Facebook profile pages, but with the "cause" option and any number of icebreakers that Facebook itself has envisioned, there's plenty to play with. 
But, back to apps. In a survey of more than 600 digital media and/or marketing professionals, done in the name of DM2PRO.com and with Quattro Wireless as a sponsor, here are just a few of the things that we found: 

Think apps are a fad? The tipping point to the contrary will be reached in 2010 for the advertising community. Among advertisers or agencies who have worked with mobile apps, a third expect their mobile apps budgets to increase by more than 75 percent in 2010, some by greater than 200 percent. As a reality check, more than half of the more than 234 advertisers, agencies and marketers who participated in the survey, said they haven’t yet developed mobile or social apps. But, among these skeptics, 65 percent said they plan to develop mobile apps in 2010, with iPhone being the clear winner in terms of platform of choice at 91 percent (followed by Android at 39 percent, RIM at 33 percent, Palm at 19 percent.)

Among those who have already developed apps, the leading platform is still Facebook, by about 12 percent (and Facebook's own stats would seem to back that up.) But iPhone is a close second, showing that marketers are keen to follow audiences wherever they live or work or interact. Branded community sites are the next most popular venue for apps, then MySpace. Android lags this list at just 9.5 percent, though it’s more popular in the developer community, and with publishers.

• For publishers who’ve developed apps, the inverse is true: iPhone leads Facebook. More than 35 percent of publisher’s who took the survey say that, even in today’s tight times, they expect their mobile revenues to increase by more than 50 percent.
• Social-only developers focus mainly on Facebook (74 percent), but 90 percent of this group are going mobile in 2010, with 75 percent working on iPhone apps and 55 percent on RIM. Android is more a factor with developers who view apps as a business and see upside in all the new Google phones.
• The survey was really the first in-depth look at the entire applications or “apps” ecosystem. As the mobile landscape continues to evolve, these data provide an essential window into where the industry stands today and where it is headed. Considering that more than half the total advertising/agency respondents in our respondents represent agencies (130), presumably with multiple clients, the number of branded mobile applications entering the market next year could be substantial.

You would think that would put news organizations with still-large traditional media reach in the driver's seat here. After all, how better to rise above the clutter than with an unlimited print marketing budget at your disposal? The surprise, of course, is that publishers who have in fact developed mobile applications rank traditional advertising near the bottom of means to promote them effectively. 
 
For background, these State of the Industry Surveys I do are developed alongside targeted "digiday" events to give digital media and marketers insights on what their peers are really doing in that environment. The affiliated daily publication reaches more than 35,000 practitioners in the digital marketing and media industry. The whole point of the exercise is to expand what professionals need to know to plan and execute their programs profitably. Quattro Wireless’ deep reach into the mobile developer community made it the perfect industry collaborator for this research because developers will exercise substantial influence on the way this market goes, and Quattro helps developers promote their apps, and provides an advertising network to help them monetize those that are ad-supported. (You might recall that Google just bought a little company called AdMob that does something very similar.)
 
Developers' apparent inclination to ramp up Android development could make this market interesting; apps that are monetized through consumer sales certainly will represent a burgeoning market. But advertisers appear convinced that iPhone apps are their best clear pathway to consumer connections.
 
Developers who work for advertisers or agencies said they expect mobile development budgets to increase sharply, while their counterpart social-only developers report their spending for next year should be roughly flat. At a time when online advertising is inching downward, 58 percent of agency mobile developers expect increases of more than 40 percent.
 
The most engaged brand categories with apps, according to active respondents who represent them, are: CPG, retail, automotive, entertainment, financial, health/pharma, media, tech, B2B and beverage. Lagging brands – those represented by advertisers or agencies who haven’t yet developed apps, in order of response by least engaged are roughly the inverse: B2B, health/pharma, media, retail, financial, entertainment, travel, CPG, tech, and auto.
 
The whole shebang -- including some fascinating data points on what mobile phone each group (advertisers/developers/publishers) employ for personal use, is available on DM2PRO.com. Publishers who took the survey got it free.