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Is Mobile Internet The Future Of Advertising?

Speaking to a German newspaper, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt said that the mobile Internet will indeed be the next major advertising platform. According to Schmidt, the iPhone is leading the charge.

Schmidt credits the iPhone's browser for taking mobile advertising to the next level. Heise Online quotes Schmidt as saying, "The iPhone was the first mobile device with a good Web browser, and more such devices will follow. Advertising will then become very personal. In a few years, mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal Web."

He also said that Google "still has plenty ideas for improving the technology and targeting advertising more effectively." I would hope so.

You can't fault Schmidt's comments about the iPhone, but other browsers aren't far behind. Opera's Mobile and Mini browsers are both capable of displaying ads on mobile Web pages. The same is true of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)'s S60 browser. There's also a host of other mobile browsers set to hit the market, such as the Android browser, Skyfire, and Mobile Mozilla. The browsers, however, aren't the issue. Mobile advertising won't be the juggernaut Schmidt says it will be without targeting ads correctly.

So far, advertisements I've seen on mobile phones aren't all that impressive. What I've noticed from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) typically links you to a generic ad campaign and not something specifically targeted to my interests. Google and other mobile advertisers have a long way to go.

2 comments:

  veiko

June 3, 2008 at 10:48 AM

As iPhone, Android and S60 all is based same browser source code (WebKit) there cannot be any advantages in WAP marketing for Apple. Opera is far beyond with their mobile browser developement with version 9.5 soon to be released. This supports XSLT formatting and SVG Tiny 1.2 standards as WebKit have problems even getting SVG SMIL animations supported.
Which goes to mobile banner ads and WAP browsing, so I'm testing my mobile blog site at wap.mobiblogi.com. When Google AdSense usual earning per click has been several dollars, AdModa network is paying me only 10 cents. The number of visitors to my wap site has been some per day as my Internet blog is getting hundreds of visitors per day.
So far I have got one ad click from 600 visitors earning me 10 cents as from Internet site it has been around 12% visitor click thru rate.
Its long way to go when WAP advertising will be enough profitable business model to produce decent content. That's why I'm testing pay per view business model from my WAP site and currently seeking partners from content publishers, who have interest to get paid for their content.

  Suresh Kumar A

June 5, 2008 at 6:05 AM

I appreciate your valuable comment. The mobile internet is growing. It will take atleast 2 or 3 years for users to use mobile internet more when compared to PC internet.

You may need to consider an another scenario, that mobile Gateways are deducting a lot by means of traffic when users are viewing the wap site in their mobile.

Also not all mobiles in the world supports video too. Also mobile security is not stable . So users are afraid to use mobile internet