For many years Google has had a seemingly unbreakable hold on internet search, with competitors like as Bing and Yahoo having a hard time making any gains in the marketplace.

However, search on mobile devices is developing into quite a unique proposition, with differences in content, user expectations, and technologies.

Venture Capitalists are now betting that Google might well be vulnerable in this new area of search. And so they are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into start ups that are targeting mobile search. more»

Most people know that Google uses a complex system to determine which results to show from a search query. What some people may not know is that this algorithm gets updated periodically.

In mid-April, Google implemented a major change, one that was focused on the mobile-readiness of websites.

While this may seem to be a small technicality, in fact it can have huge impact on anyone that depends on customers finding them through Google. more»

With annual advertising revenues approaching US $60 billion, we all know that Google serves a lot of ads each year.

But along with this huge volume of legitimate advertising, there are a lot of “bad ads” that Google has to deal with. For example, “bad ads” might be ads for counterfeit products, ads that lead to malware sites, ads for phishing, etc.

Last year Google blocked 524 million bad ads. This post and infographic give some further detail into this very interesting part of Google’s business. more»

When Marissa Mayer took over the CEO spot at Yahoo!, she publicly stated that “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company.”

“We’re late” she said, “We’re behind.”

Now, over two years later, there are signs that Yahoo! is making inroads in the mobile space.


According to new projections from eMarketer, in 2015 Yahoo! should overtake Twitter to become the third largest mobile advertising platform in the US.
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Last week, Facebook announced it’s testing a new advertising unit in its Marketplace that will feature a “buy now” button in the ad.

It’s no secret that Facebook is a digital advertising behemoth. eMarketer predicts Facebook will serve over 21% of all mobile ads this year, which earns Facebook the number two spot in all digital ad sales, second only to Google.

That being said, Facebook “buy now” ads simply won’t work. Here’s why.
Industry Opinion by David Rekuc, Ripen eCommerce more»

Twitter is certainly one of the hottest topics in the past week, having just completed a very successful IPO that valued the company at almost $25 billion on the first day of trading.

So we thought it would be a good time to review Twitter’s activities in the area of mobile advertising, where much of its revenue is expected to come from.

This article also takes a look at Amplify, a special advertising program that Twitter has created to monetize the second screen TV experience. Amplify has recently been adopted by the major brands such as NFL, Verizon, and McDonalds. more»

Mobile Marketing has usually been an “early adopter” of all new mobile technologies: agencies and brands have been good at figuring out how some new technology can be used to increase engagement, demand attention, or build loyalty (think about AR, mobile apps, accelerometers, location, etc.)

Here is a really interesting new technology demonstration from Google, showing off one of the features of HTML 5 that is in Chrome. We don’t think we’ve seen this in a mobile marketing campaign yet, but we’re sure some innovative agency will start soon!
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In 2012, Google‘s advertising revenues were more than $40 billion, and the bulk of that was earned from their AdWords product.

Now Google has completely upgraded this key product to better focus on mobile and the rapidly growing multi-screen consumer behavior. more»

Wouldn’t it be great to take some of the best advertising campaigns from the past, and bring them into the 21st century world of mobile?

This is exactly what Google and Coke have done. They teamed up to re-interpret one of the most iconic ad campaigns of all time, with some of the most creative use of mobile technology that we have seen.

The results worked so well that the campaign was awarded the first Mobile Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions festival. more»

As we start a new year, sometimes it is useful to look back on the year just finished and consider what major trends took place that may impact the future.

The folks at Google have done just this and have given us their view of the most significant developments that took place last year. As Google is clearly now one of the world’s most powerful mobile companies, its worth a look. more»

Winter is the flu season around the world, and many companies launch special advertising campaigns at this time of year for flu related products.

When Vicks – a leading provider of cold & flu medicine – rolled out a mobile marketing campaign for their Behind Ear Thermometer they wanted to target only consumers in locations where the flu was common.

Sound impossible? Read how a special free service from Google helped them accomplish this objective! more»

Google has released some interesting data indicating that 44% of Christmas gift searches will be done via mobile this year compared to 20% last year and less than 2% in 2008. more»

Google recently announced that it was launching its Call Metrics service in the UK.

This service is a very clever way of providing additional analytics so that advertisers can measure the effectiveness of their ads that include phone numbers as a call to action. more»

Sometimes we come across an idea that is so interesting or innovative, we have to report on it even if it is not yet clear what the uptake will be.

One such idea is the “QR code service from Space“, recently launched by Phillips & Company.

Check it out. more»

This week at the Mobile Marketing Forum in London, Google announced the launch of a new mobile consumer data resource, Our Mobile Planet.

The Our Mobile Planet web site provides users with free access to the full set of data from a major mobile market study commissioned by Google. more»

A lot has been written recently about the competition between Apple and Google, and more specifically about the competition between devices built for Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android platforms.

Inneractive is a premier mobile ad mediation provider, with coverage in over 200 countries. They have put together a very informative infographic which compares the specific performance of mobile advertising on these two leading platforms. more»

A new report by Canaccord Genuity has predicted that Google’s mobile ad revenue will reach US$14 billion by 2015 driven by smartphone uptake, growth of Android, and new services offered by Google. more»

Google is clearly the dominant player in online search, and although they already have a strong position in mobile search, it remains unclear if they will be able to replicate their level of domination in the long term in the mobile market.

A recent report published by Pyramid Research examines how differences in consumers’ usage of mobile devices as well as emerging new technologies may well open the door for new competitors to develop a strong presence in the mobile search market. more»

Every once in a while you run across a graphic that is so striking you just have to share it.

The team at Scores.Org and ByJess.Net have done some analysis and have put together a super infographic which displays Google’s acquisition appetite over the past several years.

This chart is definitely worth looking at, both for the information it contains as well as the cleverness of the design. more»

Android’s recent momentum has continued with a key milestone as it has dislodged Symbian from its 10-year reign as the leading Smartphone OS.

According to research company Canalys, Android sold 32.9 million devices during Q.4 2010, overtaking Symbian, which sold 31 million. more»

Sometimes it seems that digital advertising has evolved into an overly complex eco-system with so many interconnected players that it is difficult to keep track of them all.

Take a look at this incredible chart which attempts to provide an overall context and put all the key players into perspective.
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A recent post on Google’s blog has revealed that AdMob, its mobile ad network, has experienced huge growth since Google bought it out for $750 million.

AdMob now receives 2 billion ad request a day which represents a quadrupling in the last twelve months since the takeover. more»

Recent figures from research firm IDC show that the US market for mobile advertising is growing at a rapid rate, doubling over the past year.

Even more interesting is the conclusion that Google currently represents almost 60% of this market revenue! more»

For several years now search giant Google has been saying that mobile is one of their most important areas for growth.

In their most recent quarterly financial report, Google announced that they expect their mobile business to reach $1 billion in revenue this year. more»

For many years, the mobile industry has been anxiously anticipating the success of Location Based Services. And the world of mobile advertising has looked forward to highly relevant location-based advertising becoming an important new revenue stream.

But until recently, the promise of LBS always seemed to be just one or two more years in the future.

Now social network giant Facebook has launched their mobile location service “Places”, and the future of LBS might never be the same. more»

For a company whose roots are firmly in the fixed internet, Google has been consistently aggressive at supporting mobile based services.

In particular, they have spent a lot of energy working to make mobile search as relevant as possible to a consumer’s mobile needs.

In line with this, Google just has released some very interesting location-based extensions to mobile AdWords. more»

Over the past several months, as the battle for the future of the mobile marketplace has heated up, much of the conversation has focused on Apple and Google, while less attention has been paid to the other two giants in this area – Microsoft and Nokia.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the recent moves by Microsoft related to mobile and mobile advertising to see what may be in store for this high profile company.

They have a long track record of success in technology businesses and big ambitions in the mobile area, but given their recent missteps in mobile, time may be running out. more»

With the recent press surrounding the acquisitions of Admob and Quattro Wireless by Google and Apple, it is easy to forget that there are other very serious mobile ad networks in the industry.

Recent announcements from ad networks such as InMobi and Jumptap show that they are not scared of taking the fight to Apple & Google. Both of these ad networks have recently announced the creation of multimillion dollar funds in order to get application developers and publishers to sign up to their networks. more»

AdMob has been very much in the news over the past few weeks – being acquired by Google, testing new geo-targeted ads, releasing a new SDK to support the iPad, and updating their AdWhirl optimizer.

Taking a look at all these latest activities gives some idea of where this mobile advertising pioneer company is heading. more»

Ringback tones are a very phone centric form of advertising – there is really no parallel in print, online, or TV.

If you have ever wondered what these are, or wanted to understand more about how they work and the right way to implement a RBT system, then take a look at this whitepaper from the Mobile Marketing Association. more»

Since Apple bought Quattro Wireless at the end of last year there has been speculation that Apple might decide to enter the mobile ad business.

A recent job offering on the Apple website seems to confirm their intentions. more»

Continuing their focus on becoming a leading mobile advertising company, Google has announced a new mobile search feature that let’s consumers use their current location as part of the search query.

For consumers with iPhones and Android phones, Google can now add a location based filter to all mobile search results, helping consumers find more relevant search results. more»

The mobile advertising market continued to heat up recently, with Apple‘s acquisition of Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad platform and network company.

This move follows only weeks after global internet search company Google acquired rival ad networkAdMob. more»

In a move to link online content to real world locations, Google has launched a new QR-code based Favorite Places on Google program.

Google has identified the top 100,000 most searched stores in the US, and has sent them a window decal that includes a unique QR code. When consumers scan the code with their phone, they go directly to a Google mobile web Place Page about the business. more»

A new service called Google Goggles has been launched by Google labs. It is intended to let consumers use the camera on their phone as an input for search: simply point the phone’s camera at an object, and then receive back information about that object.
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The big news of the week is that Google has acquired leading mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million.

AdMob says they will continue to operate the AdMob mobile advertising platform, but after the acquisition by Google they “will work together to accelerate the pace of innovation in this area.” more»

Once you have built a mobile website, it’s vitally important to keep track of how its being used, how many people are visiting, etc. This is the field of mobile analytics.

One of the most popular analytics packages for the web is Google Analytics, and now Google has announced a series of upgrades so that it works on mobile sites as well. more»

Reacting to the growing popularity and installed base of high end smartphones, Google has introduced some new features for their AdSense for Mobile product.

These new features take advantage of the full internet browsing capabilities of smartphones to enable advertisers to provide a richer advertising experience. more»

Recently Google has been moving beyond its traditional areas of activity into territory more related to telephony. The beta launch of Google Voice a few weeks ago was a big step in that direction.

The question of course is how will Google generate a profit from these activities. The recent publishing of a Google patent application titled “Ringback Advertising” may give a good indication. more»

Several months ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he believes that Google may eventually make more money from mobile than it does on the desktop. Just this week Google took another step towards enhancing its mobile offering by bringing their “Product Search” feature to iPhone and Android. more»

An interesting article in AdWeek recently reported that Google has been showing agencies a new search ad option that can target iPhone users. Although Google has not confirmed these ad options, they have said that the idea has been under consideration. The concept is that advertisers would be able show specially designed ads when a search request is received from an iPhone user. more»

With much of the mobile content action moving off-portal, the pressure is on publishers, now in command of their mobile content destinies, to take charge and proactively promote their mobile content and sites through paid mobile search, or top-notch placement in organic search results – or both. Must publishers choose between Google and Yahoo, or are there other alternatives?

By Peggy Anne Salz, founder, MSearchGroove.
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In the past week, the internet giants Microsoft and Google both took major steps in their competitive race, each trying to rapidly build up their capabilities in the digital advertising area. more»