Chomp

Chomp Search Ads and New iPhone App Launch!

September has been a huge month at Chomp! The Chomp team has been working really hard to give you an even greater search experience.  Verizon and Chomp announced that the Chomp search engine will ship with Android phones this fall.  Now we’re making  two more announcements. We are releasing our new ad product, Chomp Search Ads. This is a significant milestone in the history of not just Chomp but the entire mobile ecosystem.  We are also launching a completely redesigned version of Chomp for the iPhone, which makes it even faster and easier for you to find the apps you want and discover new ones.

Chomp Search Ads is the first advertising product to connect app advertisers to consumers searching for apps. It will deliver the highest quality users to developers while ensuring an even better search experience for users. Chomp Search Ads, allows advertisers to capitalize on billions of app downloads for app discovery. According to Gartner Group, $893 million was spent on app advertising in 2010.  With over 200 million iOS and Android users looking for apps each month, developers are spending 20-30% of total app revenue they generate on trying to acquire new users through various advertising and marketing initiatives. Total app revenue is expected to be $50 billion by 2014, and as a result, is forecasting a $15-20 billion spend on app advertising.[1]

Developers, for the first time, can bid on keywords or phrases, which will deliver their ads when users search on those terms within Chomp. Chomp Search Ads matches app ads to the most relevant potential customer, resulting in quality ad matching for both the advertiser and the consumer. Our product will be opening up to a limited amount of advertisers during this first stage of private beta. Ads will be shown for apps based on a number of factors, such as bid price, as well as relevancy to the search term. Our users will always receive the most relevant search results, irrespective of advertising buys. Campaign reporting to advertisers will allow the developer to measure the performance of Chomp Search Ads.

Kevin Rose, Chomp advisor and Founder of app development company Milk, comments on Chomp Search Ads “Chomp’s ability to give Milk keyword ad delivery as a result of relevant user search is as ground-breaking as when Google first offered keyword advertising for the web.” Prior to Chomp Search Ads, advertisers could only buy app display or performance advertising, however under these models, ad placement is disconnected from the user’s desire to find an app.  Our goal is to make advertising accessible for the bulk of developers. It will have a huge impact for developers that don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on advertising, being able to purchase a product that specifically targets the right customers. You can sign up for the private beta at ads.chomp.com or by clicking the link at the bottom of the chomp.com home page.

Today we are also launching a new version of Chomp for the iPhone, which has a great new design, a lot of new features and it makes it even faster and easier for you to find the apps you want. Over the last year, we’ve been listening to you, our users and have conducted multiple focus groups and solicited input from a lot of mobile users. Based on your input and our own learning we have decided to take another leap forward making discovering apps an even easier and fun experience. The completely redesigned home screen features a prominent search box that automatically begins displaying search suggestions as soon as you start typing. The home screen also displays the top ten suggested search terms as determined by what is actively trending, while displaying preview icons of the top apps. Additionally, five user-recommended topic tiles are displayed on the home screen which include Free apps of the day, Top 100, New apps, On sale and Surprise me. We are really excited to share our new iPhone app with you! It is available for download at Chomp.com and iTunes.

Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder

Screen shots of Chomp Search Ads

 

Screen shots of the new iPhone app

 

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[1] Statistics as reported by TechCrunch

Verizon Announcement

Today is a significant day in Chomp history.  This morning, Verizon’s Chief Marketing Officer Marni Walden delivered her keynote address at the Verizon Developer Community Conference in Las Vegas. She announced that beginning this fall, all Verizon Android phones will ship with Chomp’s app search engine. Chomp will be integrated into the newly launched Verizon Apps store.  Given the fact that Verizon is the largest U.S. carrier, this is monumental news for Chomp and for Verizon Android customers!  The fact that Verizon recognizes the importance of app search enough to integrate it into their phones means that Verizon App customers will be able to search for apps based on what an app does, not just the name of the app. Chomp’s search technology makes it possible to search for “restaurant guides,” "kid’s games," "expense trackers," or any description, and instantly see the best apps for that search term.  Chomp realized early on that web search doesn’t work well for app search because the information that’s available about apps is completely different than Web data.  And to add to the challenge – there’s now almost a million apps available.  Both of these factors make app search very hard.  But the fearless Chomp team has been working on this for over two years and we currently have 11 patents pending in app search and user experience. 

And because Verizon carefully evaluated the other app search products out there and decided that Chomp was the best option is an incredible honor.  Thank you to our partners at Verizon and to Verizon Android users – get ready to discover some very cool apps!

Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder

 

Screen Shots of the New Verizon App Store

 

 

Searches for Hurricane and Earthquake Mobile Apps Dramatically Increase in August

Today we released our consumer search report for August. The month proved to be a challenging one for the eastern U.S. as residents struggled with Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Emily and the Virginia earthquake.  At Chomp we could see that mobile phones were an important tool as people struggled to deal with these disasters.  Search traffic for hurricane apps spiked more than 2000% above trend during Hurricane Irene’s formation, warning, and landfall. A 250% spike was seen during the formation of Tropical Storm Emily. Search traffic for earthquake apps was up 2000% immediately after the 5.8 magnitude event in Virginia. 

Our thoughts are with those that suffered during the storms and earthquake, as they work to rebuild their lives and communities.  Their courage is very inspiring to everyone here at Chomp and we wish them well. 

While natural disaster related apps were of the most interest to search users, other trends emerged during the month:

• Once again Games were a top search query. On Android, game queries increased from 21.7% to 25.7%, and utility queries increased from 11.5% to 15.8%. Queries for iOS games dropped slightly from 31.7% to 27.7%, while its share was distributed among several smaller categories.

• After three consecutive months of increasing paid app downloads we saw a decrease in August. Paid app downloads decreased by 4% on Android, this decrease was seen across lower and premium price points. iOS saw an increase in paid app downloads of 1%. The $0.99 price point saw a small drop in share, which was redistributed to higher price points.

• The top Android search queries were “free,” “games,” “entertainment,” “music” and “utilities,” The top five Android app searches were for Angry Birds Rio, Sound Hound, Angry Birds, IMDB Movies & TV, and Advanced Task Killer. The top iOS queries were for “games,” “entertainment,” “puzzle games,” “adventure games” and “lifestyle.” The top iOS app searches were for Dropbox, Cut The Rope, Plants vs. Zombies, Tap Pet Hotel, and Instagram.

 

Chomp Charts August

 

Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder