MindLog@지동아빠(jdpapa)

Both Google and Yahoo want to show you ads on your mobile phone. Yahoo has partnered with Vodafone in UK to show “carefully targeted display advertisements” to volunteering customers, who will in turn get discounts on certain services. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt is even more bullish about the possible benefits of mobile ads for the customer - to the extent of providing free phones.

Google seems to be moving uncharacteristically slow in this direction. It has not entered into any deal with operators. In some countries, it shows ads to people googling on their phone browsers. These ads, keeping with the phone screen sizes, are shorter than the ads meant for the desktop.

Whenever mobile ads come of age, there will be big money involved. Online ads gave thousands of web start-ups a business model and a gigantic revenue stream to Google.

A record $4.2 billion was spent on Internet advertising during the third quarter of 2006, up 33% from the $3.1 billion spent a year ago, according to a study released Tuesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
(Source)

Targeted ads

Mobile ads can be much more targeted than the online ads - where ads are mostly selected on the basis of the context of the page on which they are to be displayed.

Mobile ads can be targeted based on your location. GPS receivers are going to be as widely available on mobile phones as cameras have become. But even before that, a coarse estimate of user’s location can be made on the basis of the cellular towers that he can contact. Other parameters that can be used by the targeting algorithm are the user’s profile available from the operator (age, sex, monthly spending in telephone bills etc.) and time of day.

So, if you happen to be around TGIF between 7-8:30pm, you’ll get a notification that their happy hours are on, but only if you are not a minor. How does that sound?

Google has expanded to several additional countries a test to provide ads to mobile devices, as the search engine giant pushes into this uncharted territory and attempts to extend its vibrant advertising business into the realm of cellphones.

The test, which began in August, was available in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Japan, and now it has been extended to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Ireland, India and Australia, a Google spokeswoman said.

These text-based ads appear along with search results delivered to mobile devices, and they contain either a link to a mobile website or a phone number which users can click on to generate a call. In the U.S., companies can choose specific carriers for their ads.

Google's rivals, like Yahoo, are busy launching mobile ad programs because they consider this a new frontier in online advertising, as more people worldwide access websites and Internet services from their cell phones.

More information about Google's mobile ads program can be found at the Google website.

Meanwhile, a Google employee disclosed in his personal blog on Tuesday that the company has begun adding click-to-call functionality to U.S. business listings that appear on Google Maps.

Users who click on the "call" link will be asked to enter their phone number and Google will initiate the call with the business in question. The service is free to Maps users.

Justin Uberti, who joined Google last month after 10 years at AOL, wrote in his blog: "No microphone, no software needed: it uses your existing phone. Your phone number will also be saved so that you won't need to enter it again the next time."

Google, which has made no secret about its efforts in the click-to-call ad format, including a collaboration with eBay, didn't reply to a request for comment regarding Uberti's blog post.

— Juan Carlos Perez