SAN FRANCISCO — In a push to expand its digital advertising empire to cellphones, Google has agreed to acquire AdMob, a fast-growing mobile advertising start-up, for $750 million in stock, the companies said Monday.
AdMob is one of the top sellers of banner ads on iPhone applications and Web pages that can be retrieved from mobile phones. The acquisition could help establish Google as an early leader in the small but rapidly expanding mobile phone advertising business.
“The deal shows that Google is serious about becoming a major player in the mobile advertising ecosystem,” said Neil Strother, an analyst with Forrester Research. “It puts Google in the front-runner position.”
Mr. Strother and other analysts said that position could prove tenuous. The mobile advertising business, which has long been hailed as the next big thing, remains embryonic. Sales of mobile ads were just $160 million last year, according to the Kelsey Group, a market researcher, and the vast majority of it went to ads delivered by text message. By comparison, marketers spent more than $23 billion in online ads in 2008, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.
The growing popularity of the iPhone and other powerful mobile devices ensures that mobile ads will become more ubiquitous, but predictions for the growth of the business vary widely. “We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president for product management at Google, said in an interview. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.”
Google is already ahead of its rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo, in one segment of the mobile advertising business: ads linked to search queries. The acquisition of AdMob, whose ad clients include Procter & Gamble, Adidas and Land Rover, will help it expand into display ads.
The all-stock deal is modest for Google, given its roughly $177 billion market value. But it is the company’s third-largest acquisition, behind the $3.1 billion deal last year for the advertising specialist DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006.
As Google’s core business of selling text ads has been slowing, the company has been looking for businesses that could bring new growth. It has focused in two areas in particular: display advertising, a business where it has lagged behind rivals like Yahoo, and mobile advertising.
Google’s ambitious push into cellphones includes mobile applications like search and maps as well as the Android software for smartphones. AdMob also sells banners that appear inside apps made for smartphones running on Android, and the acquisition could help Google profit from that growing market.
AdMob was founded by Omar Hamoui in 2006 while he was still a graduate student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The company is one of a few mobile advertising start-ups that analysts say have outsmarted the giants of Web advertising and established themselves as leaders in the emerging business. Analysts said that the others, which include JumpTap, Millennial Media and Quattro Wireless, are likely to draw the interest of Google rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo.
“I suspect the market is ripe for consolidation,” said Noah Elkin, an analyst with eMarketer.
AdMob has received $47 million in financing from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and other investors and has about 140 employees. In an interview, Mr. Hamoui, who is chief executive, declined to disclose AdMob’s revenue but said that sales had more than doubled in the last year. Google said it hoped to close the acquisition in the next several months. The deal is likely to be reviewed by regulators, but Ms. Wojcicki said she expected it would be approved.
“We think that mobile advertising is a very competitive area, and we don’t see a lot of regulatory concerns,” she said. Critics of Google’s rapid expansion, however, said they hoped the deal would face a thorough review.
“We’ve reached a point in Google’s evolution in which Washington agencies and Congressional committees need to look more closely at the company’s dominance of Internet services,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who had opposed Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. (MIGUEL HELFT-NYT)
Welcome to Mobile Marketing Blog
This Blog is dedicated to the development, discussion, exchange of experience and implementation of the Marketing through Mobile Devices.
This Blog is aimed to be the Center of Excellence in the science and implementation of Mobile Marketing that will be expected to be extensively utilized due to the fact that there are already more than 4 billion mobile devices users throughout the world.
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This Blog is aimed to be the Center of Excellence in the science and implementation of Mobile Marketing that will be expected to be extensively utilized due to the fact that there are already more than 4 billion mobile devices users throughout the world.
Please do not hesitate to express your comments, opinion, views, or contribute your articles in this Blog, so that they can be shared by interested viewers.
Best regards,
Blog Admin
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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Definition of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing can refer to one of two categories of marketing. First, and relatively new, is meant to describe marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a mobile phone (this is an example of horizontal telecommunication convergence). Second, and a more traditional definition, is meant to describe marketing in a moving fashion - for example - technology road shows or moving billboards.
Marketing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS (Short Message Service) in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when businesses started to collect mobile phone numbers and send off wanted (or unwanted) content.
Over the past few years SMS has become a legitimate advertising channel in some parts of the world. This is because unlike email over the public internet, the carriers who police their own networks have set guidelines and best practices for the mobile media industry (including mobile advertising). The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and the Mobile Marketing Association, as well, have established guidelines and are evangelizing the use of the mobile channel for marketers. While this has been fruitful in developed regions such as North America, Western Europe and some other countries, mobile SPAM messages (SMS sent to mobile subscribers without a legitimate and explicit opt-in by the subscriber) remain an issue in many other parts or the world, partly due to the carriers selling their member databases to third parties.
Mobile marketing via SMS has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer. SMS initially received negative media coverage in many parts of Europe for being a new form of spam as some advertisers purchased lists and sent unsolicited content to consumer's phones; however, as guidelines are put in place by the mobile operators, SMS has become the most popular branch of the Mobile Marketing industry with several 100 million advertising SMS sent out every month in Europe alone.
In North America the first cross-carrier SMS shortcode campaign was run by Labatt Brewing Company in 2002. Over the past few years mobile short codes have been increasingly popular as a new channel to communicate to the mobile consumer. Brands have begun to treat the mobile shortcode as a mobile domain name allowing the consumer to text message the brand at an event, in store and off any traditional media.
SMS services typically run off a short code, but sending text messages to an email address is another methodology. Short codes are 5 or 6 digit numbers that have been assigned by all the mobile operators in a given country for the use of brand campaign and other consumer services. The mobile operators vet every application before provisioning and monitor the service to make sure it does not diverge from its original service description.
Besides short codes, inbound SMS is very often based on long numbers (international number format, e.g. +44 7624 805000), which can be used in place of short codes or premium-rated short messages for SMS reception in several applications, such as product promotions and campaigns. Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own number, rather than short codes which are usually shared across a number of brands. Additionally, long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers.
One key criterion for provisioning is that the consumer opts in to the service. The mobile operators demand a double opt in from the consumer and the ability for the consumer to opt out of the service at any time by sending the word STOP via SMS. These guidelines are established in the MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines which are followed by all mobile marketers in the United States.
Applications of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing via MMS
MMS mobile marketing can contain a timed slideshow of images, text, audio and video. This mobile content is delivered via MMS (Multimedia Message Service). Nearly all new phones produced with a color screen are capable of sending and receiving standard MMS message, with the notable exception of the iPhone. Brands are able to both send (mobile terminated) and receive (mobile originated) rich content through MMS A2P (application-to-person) mobile networks to mobile subscribers. In some networks, brands are also able to sponsor messages that are sent P2P (person-to-person).
A good example of MMS mobile originated Motorola's ongoing campaigns at House of Blues venues where the brand allows the consumer to send their mobile photos to the LED board in real-time as well as blog their images online.
South Africas Leading Mobile Marketing Strategists are called Pocket Media link title
In-game mobile marketing
There are essentially four major trends in mobile gaming right now: interactive real-time 3D games, massive multi-player games and social networking games. This means a trend towards more complex and more sophisticated, richer game play. On the other side, there are the so-called casual games, i.e. games that are very simple and very easy to play. Most mobile games today are such casual games and this will probably stay so for quite a while to come.
Brands are now delivering promotional messages within mobile games or sponsoring entire games to drive consumer engagement. This is known as mobile advergaming or Ad-funded mobile game.
Mobile web marketing
Google and Yahoo! as displayed on mobile phones
Advertising on web pages specifically meant for access by mobile devices is also an option. The Mobile Marketing Association provides a set of guidelines and standards that give the recommended format of ads, presentation, and metrics used in reporting. Google, Yahoo, and other major mobile content providers have been selling advertising placement on their properties for years already as of the time of this writing. Advertising networks focused on mobile properties and advertisers are also available.
Mobile marketing via Bluetooth
The rise of Bluetooth started around 2003 and a few companies in Europe have started establishing successful businesses. Most of these businesses offer "hotspot" systems which consist of some kind of content-management system with a Bluetooth distribution function. This technology has the advantages that it is permission-based, has higher transfer speeds and is also a radio-based technology and can therefore not be billed (i.e. is free of charge). The likely earliest device built for mobile marketing via Bluetooth was the context tag of the AmbieSense project (2001-2004). More recently Tata Motors conducted one of the biggest Bluetooth marketing campaigns in India for its brand the Sumo Grande and more of such activities have happened for brands like Walt Disney promoting their movie 'High School Musical'
Mobile marketing via Infrared
Infrared is the oldest and most limited form of mobile Marketing. Some European companies have experimented with "shopping window marketing" via free Infrared waves in the late 90s. However, Infrared has a very limited range (~ approx. 10 cm - 1meter) and could never really establish itself as a leading Mobile Marketing technology.
Location-based services
Location-based services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location. The cell-phone service provider gets the location from a GPS chip built into the phone, or using radiolocation and trilateration based on the signal-strength of the closest cell-phone towers (for phones without GPS features). In the UK, networks do not use trilateration; LBS services use a single base station, with a 'radius' of inaccuracy, to determine a phone's location.
Meantime, LBS can be enabled without GPS tracking technique. Mobile WiMAX technology is utilized to give a new dimension to mobile marketing. The new type of mobile marketing is envisioned between a BS(Base Station) and a multitude of CPE(Consumer Premise Equipment) mounted on vehicle dashtops. Whenever vehicles come within the effective range of the BS, the dashtop CPE with LCD touchscreen loads up a set of icons or banners of individually different shapes that can only be activated by finger touches or voice tags. On the screen, a user has a frame of 5 to 7 icons or banners to choose from, and the frame rotates one after another. This mobile WiMAX-compliant LBS is privacy-friendly and user-centric, when compared with GPS-enabled LBS.
In July 2003 the first location-based services to go Live with all UK mobile network operators were launched.
User-controlled media
Mobile marketing differs from most other forms of marketing communication in that it is often user (consumer) initiated (mobile originated, or MO) message, and requires the express consent of the consumer to receive future communications. A call delivered from a server (business) to a user (consumer) is called a mobile terminated (MT) message. This infrastructure points to a trend set by mobile marketing of consumer controlled marketing communications. Due to the demands for more user controlled media, mobile messaging infrastructure providers have responded by developing architectures that offer applications to operators with more freedom for the users, as opposed to the network-controlled media. Along with these advances to user-controlled Mobile Messaging 2.0, blog events throughout the world have been implemented in order to launch popularity in the latest advances in mobile technology. In June 2007, Airwide Solutions became the official sponsor for the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog that provides the opinions of many through the discussion of mobility with freedom.
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