For many people, okay, Senior Executives, attending the two-day ‘Code Conference‘ in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, the big names ( such as Nadella, Brin, and err…Paltrow?) kept appearing on stage, thereby justifying the US$6,500 ‘standard fee’ entry ticket (which was already sold out weeks in advance), but in terms of ‘takeaways’ that they could show to the boss – the most important one was soon freely available to everyone online: Mary Meeker.
By that, I mean her persistently impactful Internet Trends report, which was launched ‘live on stage’. Mary Meeker is, of course, the legendary Morgan Stanley internet analyst and most recently, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers or KPBC. A firm who gets all the branding they can from the publication. Most tellingly, opinion leader TechCrunch did a ‘short form’ edit for ease of digestion.
That said, all major (and even minor) Media sites, do a potted version to help people understand what is in reality a gigantic mass of PowerPoint data, earnestly trying to tease out the insights. Tech 2’s Top Ten ‘takeaways’ was one of the most fitting, the TechCrunch version still used 50-odd slides to summarize the ‘state of the Internet union’.
“The 164-slide presentation reports talks about everything Internet and mobile. From startling facts like Tinder’s 800 million swipes to 8 million existing Bitcoin wallets, the Meeker report talks about what is happening currently and what we can expect in the future.”
Putting on our Minimob hat, and so, focusing on Mobile Advertising and the App economy, there were in fact two key ‘takeaways’ worthy of note. The first one being that Mobile Advertising is ‘big and important’, it is also funding a huge change in the Internet giants focus upon consumer behaviour; Mobile advertising now pays their bills.
Overall, Mobile Ads rose 47 percent last year to become 11 percent of the total digital advertising spend of USD$116B. Happily, this trend is continuing to move onwards-and-upwards. The punchline however, was when Mary highlighted a neat Double-whammy for App developers and publishers the world over, in that Mobile App Revenue Still Trumps Mobile Ad Revenue at 68 percent of $38 Billion Mobile Monetization, mostly via premium pay-to-play, subscriptions & In-App purchases.
In the end, after having caught the industry off guard with a slide (two years ago) that said the mobile advertising opportunity was in the order of USD$20 billion, Mary then upgraded Mobile Advertising (in the US) to be a $30 billion opportunity, as such, she confidently stated KPCB “Remain Optimistic About Mobile Ad Spend Growth”.
So, out of 164 slides, our favourite deduced that one revenue stream (#Mobile Ads) plus another one (#App Spend) hit nearly USD$40 billion in 2013, and for 2014 would be markedly higher. More good news to share with your boss!
When ten become two, key takeouts from KPCB
