(This post first appeared on Minnov8.com, a site about web & Internet innovation in MInnesota.)
Okay, so there’s this company named Apple that I hear makes phones. And people tell me there’s been, uh, a bit of news lately about some new phone of theirs?
Well, that media firestorm didn’t stop Minnesota’s W3i from deciding to jump in with some news of its own, which is actually related to the exploding ecosystem around Apple mobile devices. That would be apps.
St. Cloud, MN-based W3i is in the app distribution business — in a big, profitable way (33 successive quarters thereof). But till now that business has been all about desktop apps, and Windows only. Well, mark down yesterday as the day they entered the world of mobile, with this bombshell: W3i Launches New Incented Mobile App Distribution Service for iOS App Developers. A separate version of the release, for consumers, gets more to the benefit: Consumers Can Now Earn Rewards for Installing Apps. Those rewards, my friends, would be cash — for consumers who register at a W3i site called Apperang.com.
Naturally, app fanboys and girls everywhere loved the news — after reading about it on some of the sites they frequent the most. TechCrunch (MobileCrunch) ran this story: Apperang Pays You Cash to Download iPhone Apps… Ka-Ching! And VentureBeat (MobileBeat) ran concurrently — amazing how that happens — with their take: Get paid to install apps with W3i Mobile Solutions and Apperang.
Numerous other sites and blogs picked up on it immediately, and Twitter was going crazy on it (just search on hashtags #apperang and #w3i). [Oh, sure, there was a story in the Mpls StarTrib last week, too, but that didn't light up much of anything… <rimshot>]
I asked the CEO of a local app development company for his reaction to this W3i news, from a business perspective: ”The model and integration W3i has developed for desktop distribution has been a huge success in the past, so I wouldn’t bet against them on making their mobile version a success,” said Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp Inc. “For developers wanting to get a core base of users fast, it makes sense to use this service. The key will be how long those users keep your app, because that’s where the return on investment is.”
I also asked one of Minnesota’s most experienced iPhone app developers for his reaction: “Will app publishers readily jump to use this type of service? Small developers, maybe,” said Bill Heyman of CodeMorphic. “But small developers may not have budget to support this type of promotion… Will it be enough to hit the tipping point for more organic sales because of a higher App Store ranking? Well, ultimately, it would depend on how much a company wants to spend to buy a ranking.”
But, actually, W3i signed on some pretty successful big developers for its private beta before the announcement yesterday (the service is now in public beta). That list of launch advertisers — just those that let W3i use their names for PR purposes — includes these firms, with the name of their app in parentheses: Big Stack Studios (Sigma), Inert Soap (FingerZilla), Booyah (MyTown), Gist (Gist), Thinking Ape (Kingdoms at War), Flixster (Movies), Slacker Inc (Slacker Radio), xCube Labs (My Health Records – Health n Family), and infinidycorp (Zombies vs. Aliens).
I’m sure we’ll be hearing about a lot more, as W3i tells me they are crazy-busy now following up with other app companies who are inquiring.
(Disclosure: the author has had a consulting relationship with W3i for providing PR services.)
Geoff Atkinson, marketing chief at Overstock.com, reiterated that “traffic is just getting so much more expensive to acquire.” His firm started using BT about a year ago. “When a customer first arrives, for example, we log how he or she got there — by a certain keyword, for example. Then, on the next visit, we know that customer and feed them something that’s relevant.” Brent Hieggelke, VP of strategic marketing at Omniture, said when he first joined the firm, his friends thought all this “on-site targeting was hocus-pocus.” But it’s quickly become for real. His firm calls it “automated 1:1 targeting.” The customer hits the site, and their technology builds a profile. “It’s a self-learning predictive modeling engine,” he said. “The optimal content decision can then be sent to the CMS (content management system).” What data is used to select content? “Site behaviors, temporal aspects (such as time of day), environmental aspects, and referrer values,” he said. “This enables companies to quit having those weekly meetings to decide what goes on on the home page.” It now can all be automated, down to the individual. Hieggelke also noted his firm has found that the log-off page is a great place for targeted ads. “Behavioral targeting is bringing marketing back to the marketing world.” A few good questions then came from the audience. The first was “What percentage of users totally wipe out their cookies regularly?” Omniture’s Hieggelke said he’s seen some say as high as 15-30%. “But we find it’s only in the single digits.” A second question related to customers’ concerns for privacy. “We think it’s important to keep a customer mindset,” said Kefta’s Suchet. “Don’t capture too much data — find just what’s relevant to you.” Omniture’s Hieggelke added: “A customer’s name and social security number has no value to us at all.” Suchet added that BT enables campaigns to be “continually learning, changing — you can’t sit still, you must always adjust based on what competitors are doing and so forth.” A final audience question: When building profiles, what data do you use? “Primarily clickstream data,” said Omniture’s Hieggelke, “because that’s easy. But also data from your CRM system, and whatever else is determined to be predictive. Most companies take existing web analystics data and feed that in first.”
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