Advertising Isn't A Mobile Strategy
from the content-comes-first dept
ReadWriteWeb has an article claiming that the way to beat Google is by having a better ad platform (via Matt Asay). It says that "the company that can corner the mobile web ad market is going to be able to go toe-to-toe with Google." This is getting things completely backwards. Google doesn't dominate the search engine market because it has the best advertising platform. It dominates the advertising market because it has the best search platform. Other companies, such as AOL, that have seen themselves as an advertising company first and a content/applications company second have gone nowhere. This is especially true because the best advertising platforms are tightly integrated with their associated applications. One of the reasons Google's search advertising is so lucrative is that Google figured out how to make its ads highly relevant to users' search terms. This had two benefits. It increased click-through rates, obviously, but more importantly, it made the ads more useful -- and therefore less annoying -- to users. The same principle applies to the mobile space. Mobile advertising will only work if companies figure out how to make the overall user experience positive so that the ads don't scare users away. The way to do that is not to focus on building the best possible mobile ad platform, but rather to build the best possible mobile services, and worry about monetizing them after they've built up a significant user base.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: advertising, business models, platforms, strategy
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
RWW is slipping!
I'm still a fan, but...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mobile Advertising
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Good writing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Googles Search Engine
If one wants a better search engine then one simply needs to take a look at Yahoo. Yahoo's context sensitive search engine by far produces superior results to Google.
That is unless you like being "spammed" by page after page of ads while futilely searching for something that has at least some relation to what you are searching for.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
However, Google had the chance to grow in a quiet homogeneous environment (OS, browsers). "Make the overall user experience positive" is quite a case in such a complex/atomised environment as mobile one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]