So this is what they mean when they talk about “the mobile search wars.”
Google last week in a long-awaited move took its AdWords mobile, placing paid links on search results accessed by wireless devices. The Internet behemoth told its hundreds of thousands of AdWords customers that every paid link would be included as long as the page it led to could be transcoded for a wireless device.
The fallout has been fun to watch.
Entrepreneurs and geeky enthusiasts have hammered Google in the blogosphere, claiming that the company is mistaking the wireless Web as nothing more than an extension of the larger Internet. AdWords can’t be targeted specifically at mobile users, detractors claim, and transcoded pages won’t consistently deliver the links on wireless handsets.
“Google is overreaching,” according to Russell Beattie of Mowser, a startup that competes with Google in the transcoding arena. “Their transcoder technology-and philosophy-just isn’t up to the job they’ve laid out for it. The problem with their way of adapting pages is very simple, and something I’ve talked about before: Publishers have little to no control over what the end result looks like.”
Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of AdMob, agreed. While transcoding technology can effectively adapt Web sites for users looking for a single piece of information, it is not “the way that you would want to present your company to a potential customer if you were given the choice.”
It would be easy to dismiss such claims as sour grapes, as both AdMob and Mowser compete with-and could be squashed by-Google’s mobile effort. But both entrepreneurs say they’re rooting for Google, claiming that a successful entry to the mobile advertising waters will raise all boats-perhaps by displacement, if nothing else.
Google, which rolled out its mobile effort without press announcements or other fanfare, said the mobile ads are free to advertisers for the next two months, at which point they will be billed at established AdWords rates. And advertisers can opt out at any time.
But the contention surrounding Google’s entry underscores the “bloody mess” eMarketer analyst John du Pre Gauntt predicts for the mobile search space over the next few years. Mobile startups, Internet giants and established media companies will experiment with a variety of mobile search offerings and business models in the next few years. And analysts agree that the right combination will win big.
“It’s a good first step,” JupiterResearch analyst Julie Ask said of AdWords going mobile, “and I’m sure we’ll see improvements as demand for the service develops. It’s a great time for advertisers and media companies alike to be experimenting and learning.”
