April 29 2008
Google for mobile
Google has added images to its mobile ads system
In an announcement on Google’s Mobile Blog Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager for Mobile Ads outlined the new mobile image ads that have gone live in the UK and the rest of the World.
The mobile image ads look like standard image ads for desktop web pages but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile content network. As with Adwords the mobile ads are keyword-targeted, and are priced on a cost-per-click basis – they must also link to a mobile web page rather than a normal web page.
According to Kenin Mobile ads “serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page.”
For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. They can now choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both and Google will dynamically return the ad that we expect will perform best at the time the ad is shown. Publishers who are already using AdSense for mobile content just need to update their AdSense code to start displaying mobile ads on their site.
Mobile image ads are currently available in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK, and the US.
It will be interesting to see the take up of mobile ads now image versions have arrived. We suspect that many mobile users probably switch images off so won’t see a difference, however if the message that users will only receive one image ad per keyword is communicated well enough then perhaps users will keep images on.
