The following also recently appeared on Mobile Marketer... When the iPhone came out, it quickly became the greatest force in creating a mobile media market. The progression was that first Apple advertised the full web on your phone; then it introduced the first scalable applications platform through the iTunes app store. The progression of mobile content usage on the iPhone does not have an as well-written history. What we have are good stats from AdMob about ad requests from the mobile web, and now a great study by Pinch Media about the downloading and usage of iPhone applications.

First Came iPhone Sites Once publishers realized that the full web on your phone wasn’t an ideal experience, they began searching for a better solution.  First, there were iPhone optimized sites – Fandango, CNN, ESPN, USA Today and others.  Some use Apple’s framework, some have strayed, but all offer a level of optimization for the WebKit browser that blows away what could be done on Blackberries, Windows Mobile phones, and other smartphones. Now, we have new developments in mobile web, like HTML 5, which will enable location in the browser, picture uploads, offline content caching and more. However, with the market’s focus on iPhone apps and the downturn in the economy, it is unlikely that the pendulum will swing back to the mobile web in the foreseeable future without a big TV spend from Apple.  So those developments will go largely unnoticed until people start seeing stats again that show the mobile web surging ahead in usage.  What people forget is that while iPhone apps are sexy, mobile sites are ultimately more discoverable through site redirects and ultimately, mobile search.

Then Came iPhone Apps Greg Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media, did a great service to both the application development and mobile web industry by putting out this honest look at the state of uptake and usage for iPhone applications. Here’s what Greg said based on the 30 million downloads using their analytics:

• There’s a 24 hour downloading window, so you’d better make a top 100, 25, or 10 list in that time
• Over time it has gotten more difficult to get noticed – 2x as hard as 6 months ago to get in the top 25, and 5x as hard to get in the top 100 as 6 months ago
• The app store is designed to maximize turnover, remember the problem with getting good placement on carrier decks? This is worse, because you don’t stay in the top lists for long

Can you Have the Best of Both Worlds? The fact is, apps offer speed and navigation that mobile web currently cannot.  Not to mention the sex appeal that gets your bosses excited.  But if they are hard to monetize, hard to find, and have a limited shelf life, are they good enough by themselves? A mobile site offers infinitely more in terms of discoverability, monetization, and current content that doesn’t depend on app upgrades, so why not have both? The cost of deploying a mobile website is also much less than an iPhone application and it will immediately work on all phones. Having the best of both worlds is not difficult. If you don’t have a mobile site – get one!

• Publishers - Not to worry, if you have RSS, XML, or ATOM feeds Crisp Wireless and others can get your content up quickly
• Brands – Not to worry, Crisp can also help you mobilize your content so you can advertise on mobile effectively
• Retailers – If you’re looking to enable commerce, companies like Usablenet can build mobile storefronts so that you can drive people within apps or in the mobile browser to locate your store or even buy your products – no API or RSS integration necessary
• Make sure you work with your app developer to  insert links to your mobile site from within your app

Have a mobile site – promote it!

• Enable sharing features – email to a friend, SMS to a friend, save to a social network to direct to mobile web links
• Make sure that sharing from your iPhone app uses mobile web links, not desktop links
• Put a link on your mobile website to advertise that you have an iPhone application
• Put mobile links everywhere – print, online, Twitter feeds, emails

[Note:  Why would a brand or publisher need to put mobile web links into Apps, on social networks and emails?  It's called SEO.  Did you realize that the content from your iPhone application does not show up in the major search engines for mobile?] Here’s more of what Greg from Pinch Media revealed about the nature of iPhone app usage:

• Of those apps with 1-3MM unique users their repeat usage went from 30% down 5% in the first 30 days, and down to 1% in 90 days
• Sports does the best at keeping users during the first 30 days, but Entertainment keeps users best over time
• Overall, most apps should be paid rather than free because it is hard to make back your development costs through advertising when you only have an average of 80 sessions to recoup your investment

Can you have the best of both worlds? Sure. It doesn't matter if you charge for your apps or give them away for free, the trend in apps without promotion is to decrease over time, but mobile web usage is increasing over time. What's the best way to monetize your investment over time? How will you improve your discoverability? Keep your content fresh? Drive traffic to your app? If you're going to have a successful iPhone app, you might as well have mobile web in place to promote it. Publishers who ignore their mobile web sites and continue to merely play with shiny apps will soon realize that if they don't leverage the power of the mobile web, they'll only be playing with themselves.

Recently, I wrote an article for Mobile Marketer about the best practices for placing content and ads on the mobile Internet. I’m asked this all the time and thought the best way for me to explain it is to break down all the variables for publishers and advertisers.

Publishers, for example, should first approach their endeavor from the consumer’s point of view. Advertisers should first educate themselves with the rules of different phone carriers. But there are so many other things to consider! Check out the article for all my tips and leave some comments here or on Mobile Marketer with your thoughts and suggestions.

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Last week I had the opportunity to provide a guest blog post over at Mobile Marketer about the future of Mobile Ad Networks. You've probably seen a lot of columns recently about online ad networks, such as here and here. So will this be another example of mobile emulating the web? In many ways, yes, but ad networks continue to play an important role. Today big brand publishers dominate mobile advertising with the most trafficked, sticky sites. As these publishers begin to realize revenue from mobile advertising, they will begin to bring ad sales in house. So where does that leave the ad networks? Read more about it at the Mobile Marketer blog and leave comments here or there. I look forward to continuing the discussion.