Many mobile phone providers have integrated Google’s search on their portal. From the data retrieved by these providers, a strong growth of the mobile market can be inferred. Additionally, many new phones have Google’s Mobile search as an integrated feature, which makes a higher usage estimate probable.
In a recent press release, Google stated that the mobile internet audience has grown fifty fold. One of the key drivers of this growth has been Apple’s new mobile phone: the iPhone. Advertisers can reap the benefits of this new way to communicate with their audience.
To serve the iPhone users, Google has developed a mobile version of its search engine, just for Apple’s browser Safari. Both Google’s Safari application and the ordinary version use the same interface. This gives the iPhone user more options than the standard mobile version of Google.
When using Google Mobile to search for say, cat food, mobile advertisements will be displayed. These ads have been developed especially for mobile phones, due to space constraints they contain less text than normal ads. Also, advertisers can be contacted directly by phone through their advertisements, so you can order Gizmo’s favourite right away.
It would be safe to say that mobile advertising can be an interesting business opportunity for advertisers. Especially with recent research stressing the tremendous growth of mobile internet.
Because the mobile web is still in a developmental phase, few companies offer mobile websites. Therefore, the search results will be limited. When mobile internet users get disappointed with the search result, they will most likely abandon the mobile version of Google, and switch to the ‘regular’ version, in order to search the web.
The issue at hand is that when a mobile internet user uses Google’s regular search, mobile ads will not be displayed on the mobile device.
The iPhone
When surfing to Google.nl with your iPhone using EDGE/GPRS, you will be redirected to Google’s mobile version (www.google.nl/m). When searching, normal text ads appear instead of mobile ads.
This is all the more interesting because:
- You are connected to a GPRS network (Logically speaking, Google should have recognised that you are
surfing with a mobile device)
- You are searching through www.google.com/m (the mobile version of Google, Google does indeed recognise that you are searching with a mobile phone
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An estimated 4 million iPhones have been sold worldwide, in 2007 alone. Another 10 million are expected to be sold in 2008. This would add up to a grand total of 14 million iPhones by the end of 2008, with 14 million people using it for things like, mobile internet. These are 14 million mobile internet users who are not being targeted through a mobile advertising campaign.
But what about the average mobile user, who accesses the web through another device than the iPhone? We took it to the test with a Sony Ericsson K550i. When searching in the regular Google search engine, no ads targeted to mobile users are being displayed. However, when the same exact keyword is being used to search Google’s mobile application, the mobile AdWord ads do appear.
Conclusion
When surfing to Google with an iPhone, mobile ads are not yet being shown in the pre-eminent search engine’s results. In addition, the Dutch mobile internet market is still pocket size, like the phones displaying it. Current mobile internet users will probably end up searching the normal web, caused by a lack of returned search results.
Through the use of contextual ads (Google Adwords/Adsense) and image ads (mobile banners) great visibility can be achieved on the mobile web. We, as Marvellous and iProspect therefore advise to create a mobile version of your current website, transforming the value of a fast growing market into an advertising victory.
By Stef de Jong – iProspect Netherlands
