Google marching forward with Mobile Ads
Today is a big day for the world of mobile advertising. Google has just announced that they have brought search ads onto the iPhone and G1.
Is it really a big deal?
Actually, no. I believe that mobile ads is an extremely young and lucrative market. However, what Google has announced today isn’t that big of a deal, given their “mobile ads” are still only available through the smartphones’ web browsers. Since it’s still through the web browser, it’s not that big of a shift from what they have already been doing on the desktop web browser.
I am a little surprised that Google has not already released a richer set of API on the iPhone or Android that allows 3rd party developers to incorporate ads into mobile native applications. Today, when we say ads, the image of banners and search text ads come to mind. But that is an extremely archaic advertising form. Digital advertising, especially mobile advertising, can and will be much richer, and will deliver much better experience than how we think of them today. Imagine if you are at a bus stop and you see a movie poster. You take a picture of the poster and it tells you the same info about the movie that you would see from Rotten Tomatoes. You can invite your friends to the movie right there over email or SMS (with an evite already created online). On top of that, it will even give you a $5 off coupon at the theater nearest you. Now, I don’t think you will find that form of advertising annoying, will you?
Anyhow, we are still at least a couple of years away from what I described above. It takes time for all the infrastructure to come together in order to be able to deliver these experiences end-to-end. Google is obviously well-positioned to take advantage of the upcoming mobile advertising boom. It will be interesting to see who would benefit from this huge opportunity. Microsoft is still in the game, so are a number of startups. I am confident that mobile advertising will eclipse search advertising over the next 5 years. If Google does not win in this space, whoever wins may unseat Google as the online advertising king.
- J.
December 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I tend to agree with you. I think mobile advertising will become huge in the next several years. It will be interesting to see how it will shake out and to see whether there will be room for the small guys to play.