This month we are launching our software development kit for Android, which we are very excited to now have available for app developers. We are happy to make this announcement, as developers will now be able to work with iOS as well as Android within our system. This is another milestone in the growth of our network and is a vital feature for Sponsormob. Considering the explosive growth of apps and the increasing prevalence of Android, this is an exciting step for us.

The availability of the Android SDK also means that Android app developers can now benefit from our Unlimited App Developer Fund and Bonus Payback Plan, which gives them the opportunity to earn bonus commissions through April 2012. This is a great opportunity for developers to get started with our network and benefit from performance marketing on mobile.

If you would like more information about our network or this announcement, please contact me (talya@sponsormob.com). Developers interested in joining our network can sign up on our Developer page.

Classified ads in newspapers and job sites on the internet are no longer the only places for the unemployed to find work. Apparently job seekers are beginning to look more to the mobile internet to find employment than before (not surprising!).  MobileMarketingWatch reports that the network of mobile applications at Beyond.com, a niche career community site, recently reached one million downloads. Beyond.com considers itself the world’s largest network of niche career communities and offers job seekers the ability to view job listings from their mobile device (MobileMarketingWatch). The article points out that being able to quickly check the latest job offers and updates keeps job seekers ahead of the game, giving them the opportunity to jump in and apply for jobs before the the competition, which makes perfect sense.

Of course, beyond.com is not the only online job database with a mobile app. Monster.com also makes its job searches available through its own Monster Mobile app, and other job-related websites are following suit. This shows us once again that the mobile web proves to be a practical medium for things to happen.

This is just another example of how we are seeing the mobile web solve problems for people. We love it!

We would like to wish everyone out there celebrating Easter this weekend a wonderful holiday. We will be enjoying time with friends and family, as well as the lovely spring weather we have here in Berlin at the moment. All the best to you!

This coming September, Sponsormob will be exhibiting at ad:tech London. This will be ad:tech’s seventh year in the UK and is certain to be another great event. It will be held at the National Hall in Olympia from September 21-22, 2011. The exhibition hall is already filling up, and several excellent speakers are scheduled to be at the conference as well.

We exhibited at ad:tech London in 2009 and were also able to attend last year’s London ad:tech. So of course we are really looking forward to this year’s event! Several of us will be in attendance. If you will be at the event and would like to meet with us there, please go to the event’s exhibitor list and fill out the contact form provided. Or if you would rather, feel free to contact me personally, and I would be happy to set up a meeting with our team (talya@sponsormob.com).

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

As you may already know, last week Sponsormob took home two awards - Best Mobile Campaign and Best Affiliate Innovation – at the Affiliate Marketing Awards, which took place during ad:tech San Francisco. The awards were hosted by Murray Newlands and were created to celebrate the best in the affiliate marketing industry. We are truly honored to have been recognized at this event.

We at Sponsormob want to take a few moments to thank those who made these awards possible. First of all, our partners – including our affiliates and advertisers – are the ones who make things happen. We appreciate the trust that they place in us, and we look forward to continuing to grow and develop our working relationships. Performance marketing in the mobile space is still in its infancy, and we are excited about what the future holds!

We would also like to thank our team for working hard to ensure that campaigns run smoothly and that our partners are able to benefit from the mobile space and expand their business. Our success is directly related to the effort put forth by our team, and we are very thankful to be working with such an amazing group of talented individuals.

Many thanks also to Murray Newlands, the awards founder and host. Great event!

Several of us recently returned from San Francisco, California, where we exhibited at ad:tech San Francisco. The event was excellent, as it was last year, and we made many new contacts and were able to meet with several of our existing partners. We were also very happy that this year, unlike last year, our entire team made it to the show, thanks to no erupting volcanoes in Iceland or anywhere else. We had a great time and are already looking forward to spending time in San Francisco again next year!

Some of the highlights of the event were …

The Affiliate Marketing Awards

Hosted by Murray Newlands, the Affiliate Marketing Awards were introduced this year during ad:tech and were created to highlight the best in affiliate marketing. Sponsormob won awards for both Best Mobile Campaign and Best Affiliate Innovation. This was a tremendous honor and we are pleased to have been a part of the awards. As there were no official acceptance speeches for the awards, we will be blogging our “speech” within in the next several days, so keep an eye out for this! Pictures of the event have also already been posted and are worth taking a look at (if only to see our smiling faces after winning two awards!).

Networking events

The networking parties are always a big part of any trade show, and ad:tech was no exception. We enjoyed getting out to several of the parties, including Yahoo’s big bash, the party hosted by Engage at The Ambassador, and Advertise.com’s party, among others. The Affiliate Marketing Awards were also a good opportunity to network before the show started.

The city

Business trips of course should never be all work and no play, so we made sure to get out and enjoy San Francisco while we were there as well. For several people on our team, this was a first visit to San Fran. So we packed a lot of sight-seeing into a short period of time and had a great time doing it. We were able to visit Alcatraz, the Golden Gate bridge (one of our guys actually biked it!), Sausalito, and of course, the sea lions at Pear 39. Good eats were on the menu as well, and we enjoyed everything from burgers and milkshakes to Greek food.

So yes, this year’s ad:tech trip was a definite success and as always, we are looking forward to next year’s ad:tech San Francisco! Pictures of the event can be seen on our Flickr page.

Breaking News: Sponsormob was won two categories of the Affiliate Marketing Awards.

We won both of the categories that we had been nominated for:
- Best Affiliate Innovation and
- Best Mobile Campaign

Thank you to the event organizer Murray Newlands and the judges including Shawn Collins and Steve Hall.

The award ceremony took place in San Francisco on April 12. Pictures of the awards and the event will be posted soon.

A recent study by analytics service provider Localytics shows that app users are both very loyal and very fickle – all at the same time. How is this? Well, the numbers reveal that 26% of smartphone and tablet owners will download a new app and look at it only once. The same percentage of users will also use an app more then 10 times (and many even hundreds of times) in the months following the download. That means that half of app downloads fall somewhere in between the two extremes of being looked at once and then ignored, or being used several times over. The data analyzed was that of Q3 app downloads from thousands of devices. Device models included Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7.

So what is interesting about this study? Well, it shows that about a quarter of those who download an app aren’t all that faithful to said app, using it once and moving on, most likely to the next interesting app out there. But it also reveals that the same number of users become very loyal, using the same app over and over in the months following the initial download. The challenge for developers and publishers is to create and promote apps that will engage the users enough to turn them into loyal users who access the app more (and hopefully much more!) than once. This is especially important for developers who want to advertise within their free apps – their goal will be to attract customers from the loyal quarter of users.

We talk quite frequently about all that you can do via mobile – shop, game, book travel, etc,. From what we see, much (if not most) of the activity on the mobile internet tends to be very “me” related. Think about it – shopping, playing games, dating, all of these things (which are BIG movers in mobile) tend to be more or less self-focused activities. Now we are not saying that there is anything wrong with that, but once in a while it is nice to see that mobile can be used for the good of others, especially when major tragedies occur.

Haiti was a great example. Within three weeks of the catastrophic earthquake in January of last year, over $35 million in donations had been made from – you guessed it – mobile fundraising. Users were able to text codes to the Red Cross and other organizations which then ended up as donations to the disaster relief. Loads of money was donated this way.

We are seeing the same thing start with the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan as well. Within a week of the tragedy, several  non-profit organizations, mobile carriers, and a number of celebrities began rallying people to make monetary donations via their mobile devices for the victims in Japan. According to Mobile Commerce Daily, by March 15, the American public had already donated $1 million to relief efforts through their mobile devices.

Not only are people giving money with their mobile phones, but they are also opting in to stay informed of the latest details. Through social media, people are also spreading the word, telling others about the opportunities to stay informed and make donations to groups like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Of course, celebrities are also using social networking sites (particularly Facebook and Twitter) to encourage others to give to relief agencies. As mentioned before, it is always refreshing to see some of the best of humanity – especially when it is through the mobile web!

As mobile has increased in popularity, companies have been clamoring to see who can come up with the best mobile payment options. We are seeing retail companies (like Starbucks and McDonald’s) coming up with ways to accept mobile payments in certain retail locations. Interestingly, Starbucks has already sold $3 million worth of coffee and coffee related goods via its recently launched mobile payment system (Mashable). We are now also seeing Google looking into mobile payment possibilities, according to a recent Bloomberg  article.

Even though no single payment system has really taken off yet, a January article published by Mobile Commerce Daily reported that some estimates show that mobile payments in the US alone could still exceed $200 billion by 2015. Other projections put that figure closer to $1 trillion, if technology is done right and payments are able to done simply and quickly (Mobile Marketer). PayPal has also announced that they are already seeing over $6 million a day in mobile transactions (Mobile Marketer).

So with all the talk about mobile payments, should we be worried that cash and plastic will begin show lesser importance? Probably not. This is something that we briefly touch on our Mobile Space podcast on Geekcast.fm. Peter Glaeser, our CEO, discusses what 2011 may hold for the mobile advertising industry, and he mentions that until someone is able to come up with a very convenient, practical method of making payments via mobile, there is no fear of payments via mobile devices taking over. And while the mobile payment system that Starbucks is using sounds promising, there is still a long way to go before paying with a mobile phone becomes the norm.