Google Develops AdSense for Mobile Web

Google made a major move into the mobile advertising world on Monday with a new program -- AdSense for Mobile. The search king is banking on mobile devices becoming increasingly popular. Even now, there are more mobile devices worldwide than PCs and TVs combined.

AdSense for Mobile is Google's self-proclaimed effort to develop new ways for users to find the information they need anytime and anywhere, but the underpinning is advertising. The program contextually targets ads to mobile Web site content. As its name suggests, the program aims to give AdSense publishing partners more opportunities to earn revenue through the targeted placement of mobile text ads.

"With this program, advertisers can connect with the growing number of mobile publishers, ultimately providing users with an enhanced mobile experience that helps them find what they are looking for more quickly and efficiently on the go," Google said in a published statement.

Marketing in a Mobile World

AdSense for Mobile is not just for any advertiser. The new program aims at AdSense partners who have created Web sites specifically for mobile browsers and who want to monetize their mobile content via contextual advertising. That's a smaller percentage of Web sites today, but a number that promises to grow in the future.

Like Google's other AdSense products, mobile text ads run on an auction model. The system automatically reviews the content of publishers' mobile Web sites and delivers text ads that are relevant to the Web sites' audience and content. Publishers earn money whenever mobile users click on the ads.

"Cell phones are the most personal of personal technology and carried by individuals everywhere, which makes them an almost ideal medium for targeted ads," said Avi Greengart, a mobile devices analyst at Current Analysis. "However, at the same time, that could also lead to a backlash. You don't necessarily want your device overrun with ads."

AdSense Opportunities Abound

The potential opportunities for Google in the mobile market are clearly vast. Frost & Sullivan figures the mobile advertising market in the U.S. alone will generate $2.12 billion in revenue by 2011 compared to $301 million in 2006. The Shoesteck Group estimates $10 billion globally by 2010, while EJL Wireless Research pegs the worldwide mobile advertising market at $9.5 billion by 2011.

Google already has signed pacts to get its search software on mobile handsets, but the AdSense for Mobile program is more of a direct push into the mobile advertising market. The question now is whether Google will spend billions of dollars in the upcoming action for wireless spectrum or even develop its own handset.

"In some markets, particularly emerging markets, the phone -- not the computer -- is where you get your data. So this move takes a long-term view," Greengart said. "Google definitely sees the mobile market as a supplement or maybe even a potential successor to the wired Internet."

AdSense for Mobile will be available in the United States, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan.

Sources: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070918/tc_nf/55390

Google to Sell Web-Page Ads Visible on Mobile Phones

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17 — in another step to extend its dominance of online advertising, Google said Monday that it would begin selling ads on Web pages that are viewed on cell phones.
The company said that its new product, AdSense for Mobile, would establish a cell phone advertising network in which Google would match ads with the content of mobile Web pages, much as it does online.

Other Internet giants, including Yahoo and AOL Time Warner, as well as some start-ups, have also created advertising networks tailored for mobile phones.

Dilip Venkatachari, product management director for AdSense, said the ads would provide a new source of revenue for publishers and could encourage more online sites to create mobile-focused Web sites. Like most other Google advertising systems, ad prices will be set through an auction and advertisers will pay when a user clicks on its ad.

Mr. Venkatachari said Google had encouraged publishers to have no more than two ads per mobile page, a smaller number than typically appear on a PC’s Web browser.

Google has been testing the system with a limited number of advertisers and publishers this year. On Tuesday, it will open it to all mobile publishers in 13 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, China and India.

Last summer, Google began selling ads that appear next to search results on mobile phones through a program known as AdWords. Last week, it said that all of its online AdWords advertisers, which are said to number in the hundreds of thousands, would be eligible to have their ads appear next to search results on cell phones.

Google’s further inroads into mobile advertising have long been expected. But the market remains relatively small, and analysts do not expect the new service to contribute much soon to Google’s bottom line.

Still, advertisers and publishers appear to be growing increasingly comfortable with mobile advertising. AdMob, a start-up that runs a mobile advertising network, showed 230 million ads in January and expects to show about 1.5 billion this month, said Omar Hamoui, its founder and chief executive.

“The reason that Google and others are getting in is that the market is growing so rapidly, so people are getting very excited,” Mr. Hamoui said.

Earlier in the year, AOL acquired Third Screen Media, an AdMob competitor, while Microsoft acquired Screen Tonic, a mobile ad company based in Paris. On Monday, Nokia said it would buy Enpocket, a company in Boston that displays ads on cell phones.

Microsoft said it was expanding a mobile search partnership with Sprint first announced last November. Since then, Microsoft’s search technology allowed Sprint customers to look for ring tones and local Web content, like restaurants and stores. Starting Tuesday, Sprint customers will be able to use Microsoft’s service to search the entire Web on their cell phones.

In addition, customers will be able to choose to have Sprint track their whereabouts, so that when they search for local content, they will not have to type in their location.

Users will also have access to these services through voice-activated technology, allowing them to speak into the device rather than triple-tap or type in a keyword. Want to know more about this content, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html by Miguel Helft

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18google.html?ref=technology