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Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge has the largest installed base among applications downloaded from the Apple App Store, accounting for one out of three Apple App users installing the game by February.

That finding, from the newly launched comScore Apple App Store Report, is proof that any engaging application can gain a higher penetration than one for an established brand.

Twelve out of the top 25 most popular mobile applications were games, including Hangman and Pac-man, as well as Cube Runner and Crazy Penguin Catapult.

Stylem Media’s Backgrounds application had the highest installed base among the non-gaming applications. Social networking applications such as Facebook and MySpace Mobile were close behind.

While other Apple application ranking list applications by popularity during a given time period, ComScore’s report covers the cumulative installed base of applications downloaded through iTunes.

For instance, the market researcher noticed that some of the leading gaming applications reach even more consumers than the most popular social networking applications.

With such a large base already installing the free version of the product, converting even a small portion into paid versions using premium content such as Coldplay and Tap Tap Dance offers considerable revenue potential, according to comScore.

The report is designed to let marketers gauge the audience size, demographic profile and online behavior of Apple application users.

An analysis of the demographic and online behavioral profile of Apple application users showed that they were desirable to advertisers because of their higher-than-average income and heavy engagement with online media content.

Per comScore, the online site categories with which application users spent the most time relative to the average Internet user showed above-average engagement with retail, social networking and blogs, entertainment, sports and search sites.

In other words, not only are the Apple application users more engaged with social and multimedia content, but they are also reachable and engaged online consumers, comScore said in the report.

Please click on the link below to download a PDF copy of the chart.

Tap Tap Revenge beats brands in Apple App Store downloads: comScore

Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Outlook 2009As Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Outlook 2009 proves, marketers understand the need to integrate mobile into their multichannel branding, customer acquisition and customer retention plans.

According to the Associated Press, a British doctor who is volunteering in Congo used SMS  instructions to perform an arm amputation.The doctor, David Nott knew that a 16-year-old boy whose arm was bitten off by a hippopotamus needed a forequarter amputation to remove his left shoulder.  

Dr. Knott is a general and vascular surgeon and had never carried out such an operation before. He knew this procedure was a huge risk.He text messaged a London colleague who texted him back telling him how to do it!  He text messaged Professor Meirion Thomas, a British surgeon with experience in this procedure. Dr. Meirion texted back step-by-step instructions on how to do it. Dr. Knott performed the surgery following these instructions. The boy has made a full recovery.

How cool is that? 

– Posted by Giselle Abramovich

We have all seen the hockey stick charts and innumerable slides about growth in mobile advertising. We have also seen the stats on mobile Web adoption and wireless data usage, and heard the pundits speak on and on about how “this is the year.”

Sound familiar? That was 1998.

Here we are, 10 years later, and a whole industry has been born on the speculation of mobile advertising. The players making a big gamble on the future of mobile advertising are the ever-increasing number of ad networks.

In the beginning, mobile ad networks were focused on the first basic need in mobile advertising – lack of inventory.

From there, the land grab was on and most ad networks focused on the long tail of mobile advertising to secure this precious inventory. They offered to take anyone and everyone who had mobile content and deliver and optimize their advertising efforts.

Essentially this has been a good deal for publishers, even premium publishers, because as long as their mobile platform was small, having an outsourced group monetizing their content works well.

But now the problem isn’t inventory, but a lack of quality inventory.  The big brands that advertise on mobile need to know that their brand is associated with content that is of a caliber that they feel comfortable with, and that it is contextually relevant to the consumer. Advertising a food product makes a lot more sense on Good Housekeeping than it does Joe Schmoe’s blog or a local car dealership.

Another challenge currently facing mobile ad networks is the current usage of search in mobile.

Unlike the big online ad networks that rely on search to target and serve ads, in first-quarter 2008, less than 7 percent of mobile site and content discovery is derived from search, according to the latest Crisp Wireless Index.

The majority of mobile discovery (53 percent) is through on-deck carrier portals, with 39.5 percent of discovery being performed off-deck through users directly typing in site names or bookmarks on users phones.

The problem ad networks will have, as the market grows, is that top-tier publishers will bring the inventory in-house.

In the online world, where ad networks can do behavioral targeting without content management systems, only 11 percent of ad sales are done through ad networks.

In mobile, there is the additional complication of the need for content management. Therefore the number will almost certainly end up even lower.

The future
Big brand publishers today dominate mobile advertising. They have more traffic, stickier sites and, most importantly, complex content management systems that allow them to understand how people are using mobile very differently than they are using the Internet.

As these publishers begin to realize real revenue from mobile advertising, they will bring their ad sales in house. When this begins to happen, ad servers will start to drop prices and become as commoditized as they are online.

Online ad serving has survived due to its ability to offer behavioral targeting and cost-per-click pricing. Almost all online ad networks now differentiate themselves in these two ways.

In mobile, you can take away the behavioral targeting and get some remnant CPC companies. This still represents a large market opportunity for ad networks, but very different from the premium positioning they have now.  

The winners will be infrastructure companies that can offer the ability to provide publishers with real data about how consumers are using their sites, where those consumers are coming from, where they are going, and what they are consuming.

Even more important than that, the infrastructure companies will be able to deliver comparative data; how one site is doing with respect to the mobile Web universe in general, in the vertical, and any other properties specific to that site’s focus. This is the future of mobile advertising.

Michael Weaver is vice president of strategy/business development at Crisp Wireless, New York. Reach him at mweaver@crispwireless.com.

Mobile Marketer threw a HUGE party during the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum. Here are some pictures from the event.

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk306/MobileMarketer/MobileMarketerParty/

–Posted by Giselle Abramovich