Not that this is stopping it from trying.
Associated Press general manager of mobile Jeffrey Litvack put a dent in the hype around mobile advertising today at the BlackBerry Developer Conference.
“I don't think any one application that's free is going to be fully ad-supported yet,” he said, pointing out that while the US mobile advertising market is estimated to be worth $500 million this year, most of that is search.
“Display mobile advertising is about $100 million this year, and maybe $150 million next year across all devices,” he said. “There's not a lot of money to be made from ad-supported models right now.”
However, that hasn't stopped the Associated Press from making its BlackBerry app free, following an experiment selling it for $2.99 when RIM's App World store launched last year.
“As soon as we made it free, we went from a tiny amount of downloads to a huge amount,” he says. “It was exponential. But that was in the days when you only had one option – download to pay. With the announcement this week of subscription and freemium, we'll be exploring these other kinds of business models.”
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Litvack said that the AP has notched up more than 2.5 million downloads of its mobile applications, with BlackBerry being its second biggest platform.
He also outlined the benefits of apps versus the mobile web, saying that users are spending an average of 2.7 minutes a month on the AP mobile website, but 16.6 minutes a month using the application.
Litvack also warned about the dangers of focusing entirely on iPhone – something many developers continue to do, despite the efforts of RIM, Google, Nokia and the rest.
“Everyone is running around shouting iPhone iPhone iPhone, but according to Bango, three times more consumers browse the web from a BlackBerry than from an iPhone,” said Litvack.
“BlackBerry is an important device for publishers, but I don't think a lot of them have gotten it yet. We've invested strongly in the marketplace.”
