The Blog on Branding

Google Invests in Mobile Future

In the ever-expanding market of electronic commerce, the main focus has been on the internet. And what name is almost synonymous with the internet?

Google, a company whose name is derived from the word “Googol,” which is a number with 100 zeroes following, like the way 1 million has 6 zeroes.

Now Google is branching out to another form of e-commerce: mobile. Mobile commerce hasn’t hit its peak yet, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.

Mobile advertisers have begun expanding the market. Last year, advertisers spent $320 million on mobile ads. An estimated $416 million will be spent this year, and by 2016, spending is expected to reach $1.6 billion.

“Google is now branching out to mobile-commerce.”

Want to learn more about Google’s investment in mobile?

• AdMob
• Android
• AdWords

AdMob

Google is a multi-billion dollar company, and it just extended it’s foray into the mobile market by purchasing mobile advertiser AdMob in order to expand its reach into the mobile market.

The purchase is the third largest buy Google has made in its history, following only the purchases of DoubleClick and YouTube. What the acquisition of AdMob means for Google is that it intends to expand fully into the mobile market.

AdMob has created many mobile ads for big-name companies, including Coke and Ford. Their previous advertising from the company has come in both banner and text ads. Google has previously concentrated on—no surprise—search results.

Google is behind on the mobile advertising wave; competitors like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL have all purchased mobile ad networks.

“Google is opening its wallet again.”

Android

This deal comes alongside the expansion of Google’s mobile phone, Android. Android is a mobile phone operating system that is already being predicted to revolutionize advertising. Advertisers believe using Android will allow ads to be focused on the individual, creating the most targeted campaign in history. AdMob has already created apps and ads for Android.

By using buyer information, they can send advertisements to your phone, creating a direct advertising link that will allow marketers to send you ads that are suited to your personal desires.

Android is being subsidized by Google, making the technology cheaper for customers.

AdWords

Anyone in the online marketing biz should know what Google AdWords is, otherwise there may be some problems.

But Google’s frolic into mobile isn’t nearly as young as it seems. Google rebuilt its AdWords program and created AdWords Mobile, a similar program designed to track mobile search results.

The program functions basically the same as AdWords, but there are some problems with it. The system relies on transcoding, which isn’t always compatible with low-end phones, especially ones not optimized for Web use. AdWords Mobile is not always able to recognize unoptimized mobile sites, which slows down bandwidth and results in lower-end devise rendering.

But making your website mobile-optimized is key to improving your ranking. Putting something to identify your site as optimized into your title, even something as simple as “mobile optimized” will make the Google searches for your campaign more effective.

But what does all this mean?

Google is here to stay, and because they are involving themselves heavily in the mobile business, mobile is probably here to stay as well. Google has invested millions of dollars on mobile technology, advertising, and development. If they, along with most all of their competitors, are creating mobile super-strengths, there is little hope those technologies are going away anytime soon.

By Jonathan Buczkowski Jon doesn’t have a mobile devise to test Google’s ad power, but his experience with Google tells him any problems won’t last long. Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.