Hosting Google AdWords for Your iPhone
Google has announced a new distribution channel for its ubiquitous AdWords contextual advertising platform – your iPhone. According to the Official Google Mobile Blog, ”the Google mobile ads team is announcing a new campaign-level option that allows those of you who are AdWords advertisers to show your desktop text and image ads on the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and other mobile devices with full (HTML) Internet browsers.”
While there have been ad slots available previously on mobile devices through AdWords, the links needed to land on a mobile device formatted landing page in order to comply with the various phone browsers formats. The new ad option permits a standard AdWords text ad to land on a ‘traditional’ html landing page – as the ads will be targeted only at mobile users who can easily view html pages via their phone’s browser (like the iPhone).
So what how does the new AdWords option work? The hosting experts at 34sp.com were generous enough to assist in research related to the new ad option and share their knowledge here. To view the new mobile ad option one navigates in their AdWords account to a specific online campaign. Once inside an active campaign, at the top of the page under the name of the campaign is a lin entitled, ‘Edit Campaign Settings’. Once in the ‘Edit Campaign Settings’ menu, one navigates to the third grey bar down entitled, ‘Networks and bidding’. An option under this grey bar is: ‘Device Platform’. This area has a check box next to a setting which reads, “Phones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers”. This is the check box to turn this feature ‘on’ (checked) or ‘off’ (unchecked).
NOTE: Google has automatically enabled this feature for all existing campaigns. Therefore, if you DO NOT want your ads to show on mobile devices that are html enabled you MUST go into your account settings under each campaign and UNCHECK the box mentioned above.
So what does this new option mean for those who are trying to sell goods and services through the AdWords platform? It means that if you have a product that particularly appeals to mobile users, you can easily target this audience. According to statements appearing in Information Week by Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, this market is growing fast, ”In a few years, mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal Web.” That may be over the long term. If, however, your ad campaign is targeting a more traditional user – and requires extensive order forms and also secure credit card information – it is unclear whether this type of advertising will even be feasible in the current configuration. For example, secure connections via mobile devices are vastly different that with more traditional connections.
You can view a brief video introducing the new service from Google’s product manager for the product here. It is interesting to note that the video calls for viewers to express feedback on the service and that Google will answer questions and comments in a future video post. The very first comment turns out to be rather negative, ”I can’t think of anything worse than mobile advertising. My phone alerting me to a new SMS, eagerly opening it to see who’s contacted me, only to discover an ad trying to sell me something I don’t want, need or can afford? No thanks. Internet advertising is already the bane of a web surfer’s existence, with some techniques uncompromisingly invasive. Google’s own approach is refreshingly unobtrusive, and that’s something I’ve come to respect. Don’t make the mistake of becoming annoying, Google.” The comment was submitted by a youtube user identified as ‘blaubeer’.
Whatever your personal thoughts about mobile web use and advertising, it seems likely that as the highest growth area in media – mobile phones are the next frontier for increased advertising.
This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for The Hosting News.
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