Whilst a number of teams may have underperformed at this year’s World Cup, few could have expected how dominant the Vuvuzela horn would have become. In stadiums across South Africa, the horn’s distinctive sound rings out – a symbol of the tournament – echoing fans’ frustration, pride anger and glory. And app developers have been quick to capitalise on the notoriety of the horn, described by fans and media around the world as ‘sounding like a giant swarm of bees’. Dutch app developer moblio.nl captured the imagination of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users across the world with its free application – Vuvuzela 2010 bringing the distinctive sound to phones near you.

Key to the success of any app is where it features in the App store ranking. If an app has a high position in the store, users can easily discover it via search or by simply by stumbling across it. And if the app is free, people will be even keener to download it. Being number one also opens up a great opportunity to monetise. We’d like to share a fantastic story on how Vuvuzela 2010 became the number one free application all over the world – across Europe, including the UK, Germany, France and as far afield as South Africa, Argentina, Japan and Australia as well as top 3 in the USA. It has also earned its developers moblio.nl tens of thousands of dollars a week through advertising revenue.

moblio.nl formed in 2009 in Amsterdam by its directors Jeroen Retrae and Lyan van Furth specialise in creating and realizing iPhone applications and mobile websites for national and international companies. They needed a quick and easy way to monetise the Vuvuzela 2010 app globally and capitalise on the opportunity the tournament in South Africa presented, so they decided to join AdMob’s publisher network on a self-serve basis. Following a simple integration, AdMob adverts appeared within the application: clicks and the revenue grew and grew across the world. Real time reporting by country allowed them to see their success story unfold in front of their eyes.

The team developed the Vuvuzela 2010 app as an independent project and the company is now earning several tens of thousands dollars per week via its share of advertising revenue. We’ve helped monetise their inventory in over 100 countries worldwide. As of today, the Vuvuzela 2010 app has been downloaded over 3.5 million times and has experienced explosive growth across the world. With the whistle set to blow on the World Cup Final on July 11th, we’re still far from sure who will be lifting the trophy but there’s no doubt that Vuvuzela 2010 has won the affection of football fans across the world.

THIS BLOG FIRST APPEARED IN THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ADMOB http://blog.admob.com

World Cup fever is beginning to take hold across the globe and AdMob is no exception. We’ve recently done some research into how people will be using their mobiles during the tournament looking at everything from likely cross-media consumption trends to choice of mobile content. What’s more we’ve developed special packages to help advertisers engage with fans worldwide during the biggest football show on earth.

The survey focused on the host country and ran across the South African AdMob network. It confirmed that South Africa has well and truly caught World Cup fever. Over 80% of respondents said they would definitely be going to the games or to the big screens at the fan parks. It’s not only the fans on the move – with their mobiles of course – as 17% of South Africans said they were “red carding” the event to go on holiday.

As could be expected, the bulk of respondents, (37%) note they will be following the World Cup on television. Mobile also scores highly and is second at 20%. Third place is fixed line internet and, finally, on the “reserve bench” we have newspapers and radio.

Fans will be using their mobiles primarily to see scores, followed by checking team standing, read news and chat.

Although the survey was purely on South Africans it’s fair to assume that football fans the world over will be using the mobile Internet to keep informed. Mobile Internet usage spiked globally during the last World Cup and should do so again. It will also be a great opportunity for our advertisers to engage with World Cup fans. The AdMob network has one of the largest collection of football related sites and apps in the world. These have an estimated 2.5 million monthly unique users and over 110 million impressions globally. And that’s before World Cup fever takes hold!

The packages we’ve developed allow advertisers to focus on these football related sites and apps in our network so they can tap into the expected World Cup surge in usage. This increase in scale and reach should help advertisers drive even more traffic to their sites, apps or mobile experiences.

THIS BLOG FIRST APPEARED IN THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ADMOB http://blog.admob.com