Google ads for mobile phones

Google recently announced that it will deploy small, custom-made, brand-image ads for mobile phones soon. When it detects a mobile phone browser, these ads will be automatically displayed on the screen. Google thinks these ads will be vital for their future in mobile advertising industry as more and more people are beginning to use their mobile phone for browsing purposes.

If you’re worried that your mobile screen is going to get clustered with lots of ads, don’t be. Google has scaled down these ads to fit into the mobile screen and moreover, only one ad will be displayed at a time, making it easier for the mobile user. Also, Google has instructed the advertisers to link only to pages that are optimized for mobile phones, as viewing normal web pages in mobile phone can be unpleasant some times. The advertisers, as usual, will pay on a per-click basis.

This ad service will be made available to a list of countries including the U.S., France, India, Australia, China, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

It will be interesting to see the response for this move from Google. With Android getting ready to hit the mobile phones soon, this might be even a precursor of things to come.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Google, All things mobile phones.

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Debunking the myths about mobile advertising

Alright; I’m back in my pavilion. I was just reading some articles on mobile marketing and this one caught my attention. The author has written something about eMarketer’s Mobile Advertising Report. The report focused on the impact of mobile advertising in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) market and its possible implications in the US market.

Now, the article says that by subsidizing mobile data plans by advertising, mobile advertisers are trying to turn mobile phones into TV sets. I wonder how on earth he came up with this correlation. Even I feel bored to say this again, but then…

Mobile advertising has something called ‘opt-in’ facility. You have to opt in for a mobile advertising campaign to get ads in your mobile phone. In other words, you have the choice to keep your phone away from ads. Do you have such options in TV? Advertisements in TV, whether you like them or not, will always be there and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So, please don’t compare TV to mobile phones.

Some of you must have heard about Sugar Mama from Virgin Mobile, which gives you free talk time for watching mobile ads. Now, the author even mocks this by coming up with this gem.

“I’m sure you’re ad creative is impressive, but I’d venture to guess that they went there to get free air cell phone minutes, not view ads.”

Oh yeah? People don’t watch TV to view ads either, you know?. They watch sitcoms and movies, in which they are served with ads, which they cannot escape from. The point is - It doesn’t matter. People are open to mobile ads as long as they gain something from them.

At last, he comes up with something about Americans getting tricked by mobile advertisers.

“You may have tricked us with TV commercials and OLAs, but we typically don’t fall for the same tricks twice (except for George W).”

Really?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Rant.

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