Re: AdSense for Mobile: Google has competition, I’m making bank with AdMob

Russell writes:
“Wow! A few days ago I noticed my earnings from Google’s mobile ads were starting to taper off around $30 a day, so I decided to flip the switch and start showing AdMob ads again so I could compare what the results would be like with my recently increased traffic. I literally changed one line of code, and everywhere where I had been previously showing Google AdSense, I began showing AdMob ads. POW! I more than doubled my income per day – not only is the eCPM higher in general, but the click through rate is 7%…, which is crazy high. I’m not sure what exactly the difference is – but obviously Mowser users like AdMob ads better – either what they’re advertising, the targeting, how they’re formatted or something.”

Winksite’s take…
We were testing ads from both networks using Winksite’s advertising preferences (publishers can switch between displaying Google & AdMob ads with one click.) After staring at a great number of these ads we observed the following:

Google AdSense Ads

• All text ads are separated from page content with horizontal lines before and after the ad.
• All text ads show a URL after the ad copy.
• All text ads display an “Ads by Google” tag.

AdMob Ads

• WML-based text ads show [AD] at the beginning of each ad.
• iPhone-based text ads shows “Ads by Admob”. Ad is placed within a box with curved corners.
• XHTML-based text ads ONLY display ad copy. No defining box or lines. No “Ads by Admob” tagline.

Now unless I misread AdMob’s recently released Mobile Metrics Report it appears a good number of AdMob’s impressions are served to phones that display the XHTML-based text ads (based on Admob’s worldwide and regional “Top Ten Handset Models” list.) As these ads can be misinterpreted as a link on the page (unlike the other flavor ads across Google and Admob) it’s likely that this could account for the performance Russell is referring to above. I don’t know if this is intentional by design or an oversight. I also don’t know enough to comment on the differences as to what each network is advertising or how effective their targeting is. What I do know is that AdMob provides publishers with granular approval of the ads to be displayed. Nice.

(Disclaimer: We’re big fans of publisher-focused services.)

— David Harper