Opinion on Google IO 2013

I’ve watched quite a few hours of the videos from Google IO last week and here is my summary

 

1) 900 Million android phones and 48B Google Play for Apps downloads   (Apple Announced 50B Appstore downloads the same day- obviously Android will surpass Apple soon)

 

2) Search is moving to personal context understanding based on user info like my calendar and previous search requests.  Example of this given using voice search where the word “it” based on previously defined nouns are used.  All very powerful stuff.

 

3) Android Apps can now have 100 Geofences per app per user.  This means an App can internally with efficient battery usage determine when a Geofence is reached and cause a notification

 

4) Lots of Google Glass stuff.  Glass screen is better than I’d thought with a resolution of 640x480.   Simple APIs connects using REST apis and connected html cards where there are simple menus and small amounts of data at any one moment. But the whole thing is very early... they’re still working on much of the functionality... I’d say another 2 years before it really takes over the world (so long as the privacy people don’t suffocate it) – but then it will really take over the world.  But of course the iWatch will also be around by then as well.

 

4) Big advances in web technologies.  All very impressive stuff and I’d say very signficant.  They are using new techniques called Web Components which allow the grouping of HTML/CSS/Javascript fragments(within this are things called Shadow DOM and HTML templates).  In this way you can define your own HTML tags with lots of functionality.  Example is Adobe have a single tag which is a PDF viewer (so a web page can add this very easily in part of a screen with a single tag). 

 

Very good talk by the Javascript team explaining about the massive improvements in performance of the past few years but they’re close to the limit.  They know they need native app performance speeds and the way they’re going to achieve this is by creating a new language called Dart.  Dart is a cross between Java and Javascript but without the performance bottlenecks of Javascript.... they think they can achieve the same speed as Java;   Dart is already working in Chrome and for other browsers it regresses back to Javascript so always works.  Of course Microsoft have something similar called TypeScript but I think its this Google open standards one which will get somewhere.

Expansion to 13 countries

From April 2nd Promoht is now running services for 13 countries/product combinations for its clients.  For 10 countries we provide a portal and for a further 3 countries we support a Roaming product.   Additionally we're now supporting content in an app used in several countries.

We're also seeing month on month increase in usage from the existing country bases leading to substantial traffic increases. 

Meet us at MWC

Promoht are going to MWC to talk business. If you want to meet us send an email to mwc@promoht.com with suggested times.

Promoht announces multi-year, multi-country deal with Vodafone Group Plc

LONDON [February 21st 2012]

Promoht, a mobile campaign management solution for mobile network operators, content owners and brands, has signed an undisclosed multi-year, multi-country deal with Vodafone Group Plc, one of the world's largest mobile communications companies by revenue and subscribers.

“We are extremely fortunate to launch our company out of the gate with the global category leader becoming our first MNO client partner” says Robin Jewsbury, Co-Founder and serial entrepreneur. “It’s a testament to a lot of hard work that was recognized by an incredibly smart and progressive team within the Vodafone organization.”

Promoht, which dynamically serves intelligently targeted content promotions to Vodafone’s new HTML5 smartphone offering (myweb.vodafone.com), launched on October 26 2011, and is now available across all major smartphone platforms in a number of countries.

Founded with a firm belief that a successful mobile advertising model has yet to be realized, Benjamin Bittman, Co-Founder and former Chief Marketing Officer of Saatchi & Saatchi in New York asserts, “Adland has reached a point in time where a .61% TTR for mobile banners (when compared with a .07% CTR online banners) is applauded. It’s essentially become a high-volume numbers game that compares less bad to ineffective with an approach that can only be rationalized through Einstein’s definition of insanity.”

Rather than following the conventions of standard display advertising, Promoht’s innovative approach is to engage consumers with compelling, ‘intelligently’ delivered content that seamlessly embeds monetizeable elements inline with the overall experience, subsequently reducing the traditional barriers to entry.

About Promoht

Promoht is a mobile campaign management solution for mobile network operators, content owners and brands that stimulates purchase behaviour by engaging consumers with compelling, ‘intelligently’ delivered content. Through a simple and easy to use editorial interface, campaign managers discover and aggregate content in real-time leading to the rapid creation of rich media campaigns. Leveraging the proprietary PromoSense engine, campaigns are seamlessly delivered across all xHTML mobile devices with TTR rates that crush industry averages for mobile display advertising.

Combining extensive experience across large-scale mobile network operators, Internet startups, and market leading global advertising agencies, Promoht was established in 2010 by Co-Founders Robin Jewsbury and Benjamin Bittman to revolutionize the promotion of content, brands and services across the mobile Internet.

2 new countries

From February 8th 2012 Promoht now support 6 countries.

1st Blog

Promoht is a new startup running in stealth mode for the past 18 months and now running its products live in 4 countries with a major worldwide operator.