Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Learn Mobile Advertising in a New Online Course

Learn mobile advertising from a new interactive course

To day there are more than 4 billion mobile users globally. Half of all new internet connections come from mobile devices.

The course are for those who are interested in learning more about mobile advertising and how to easily setup your AdWords accout to target more users on mobile devices.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Mobile marketing vs Internet Marketing – What happens?

It’s more and more obvous that Mobile will be the next big thing for various platforms. In social networking, gaming or advertising, mobile has definitely been touted as the next device for taking all of the earlier mentioned to the next level by making it available to everyone, no matter what their location. When we think mobile marketing, the first thought that comes to mind is SMS marketing, which most of us do not appreciate. But the advent of 3G will change mobile marketing leaps and bounds. Inevitably, mobile marketing will probabely overtake internet marketing sooner or later.

And Why is this inevitable?
The only two words that should answer the question is; Google, Apple. Google purchased AdMob, one of the leading mobile advertising companies, and Apple, who had initially tried to buy AdMob, bought Quattro, another mobile advertising company, and shortly later after that Google acquisition. Apart from these giants, InMobi, formerly known as MKhoj, and that is also in the race to rule the mobile advertising world.

Why will Mobile be bigger than Internet Marketing?

The answer is, Mobile phones will have higher penetration than computers. Also, the number of users using mobiles to surf the internet has increased immensely and will only continue to increase. This is precisely the reason why big names like Google and Apple are investing in mobile advertising companies. It probabely only a matter of time before mobile marketing overtakes internet marketing. The real question is how far behind will it leave internet marketing?

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Google, iPad, Geo-targeting, AdMob



AdMob has been acquired by Google, and are now testing new geo-targetedads, releasing a new They will also release a new SDK to support theiPad, and updating their AdWhirloptimizer.

This is the latest activities and give some ideas of where this mobile advertising pioneer company is heading.

Google Acquisition
The biggest news of course is that Google’s acquisition of AdMob was finally approved by the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) after the FTC concluded that the deal was unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks. In particular the FTC cited Apple’s acquisition of ad network Quattro and the launch of the iAd as part of the iPhone OS as indicators that the market would remain open and competitive.

see MobiAD article: The Future of iPhone & iAd

Ad format for iPad
In June AdMob released an SDK that supports special iPad ad formats. Both iPad Text & Tile Ads and iPad Image Ads are supported within the SDK. The AdMob SDK is now unified across all devices running the iPhone OS, which means that developers can download one binary for development across all Apple iPhone OS devices – iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

In May 2010 according to recent numbers from the AdMob, they served ads on approximately 850,000 unique iPad devices. 38% of the unique iPad devices in AdMob’s network came from outside of the US.

Geo-targeting
AdMob has recently begun testing their new, real-time, geo-targeting targeted advertising in the UK, partnering with location-enabled dating site Lovestruck.com.

AdWhirl
An AdMob’s product that has not received too much attention to date is AdWhirl, which they acquired in late 2009. AdWhirl is an ad mediation product for mobile applications. It enables the app developer to easily source ads from several mobile ad networks to be served in their application. This is accomplished with a single set of ad codes, and the ads are selected according to rules setup by the developer.


AdMob has made the following changes to AdWhirl:

• It now supports both the iPhone platform as well as the Android platform
• Developers can now use an unlimited number of ad networks in their apps
• AdWhirl now fully supports Apple’s iAd
• House Ad functionality has been expanded so developers can centrally manage their own house ads

AdMob currently sees more than 100 million ad requests coming through their AdWhirl platform, from some 1,700 mobile applications. AdMob says they are commited to AdWhirl, saying “We believe that open source mediation plays an important role in the mobile ecosystem by giving developers the control they need to manage their business.”

Monday, June 14, 2010

Mobile SEO is important in 2010

2010 is the year mobile search need to implement mobile SEO best practices and that’s more important than ever. Optimization evolves in a high speed, and with the emergence of mobile search, staying connected to potential customers, and where and how they search, has just gotten a bit more complex than it was. With global mobil usage around 5 billion and rising, the importance of establishing a strong SEO presence should not be underestimated. More striking is the fact that iPhone users represented about 6% of the smartphone market in 2009, yet drove 70% of all mobile searches. This means that people want to search on their mobile devices, and they just need a capable phone to do it.

What about Links
Not so important.Pagerank? Apparently mobile rankings is not an issue. Developing a mobile search strategy requires a shift in paradigm to drive mobile traffic to your site. With an amalgamation of traditional SEO and new best practices floating around, suggesting changes for mobile optimization could be a potential minefield.

This is a suggestion to prepare your SEO campaigns for success in mobile search.

What to do
The mobile web is different from the traditional web. Your homepage won’t help you here. Instead, you’ll have to recode your site to display properly on mobile devices in order to avoid losing visitors who land on a page of mumbo jumbo script. So, you have to use valid code and that mean that you need to use XHTML (at the moment), and using it well. By using W3C compliant XHTML code on your mobile site, you can ensure that users are seeing the content you want them to see, the way you want them to see it. While you are coding your site, and don’t forget traditional SEO practices. Keyword in headers and content are still effective and should be used, following traditional best practices.

Keyword Ranking
Mobile SEO success is dependent on two crucial factors: location and timing. If a user is searching for “car repairs in a spcific place”, the limited number of mobile sites in combination with a fast upload time for your site could make a small mom and pop auto shop rank just as highly as a Pep Boys in the area.
Keywords for SEO should be targeted, but in a different way than traditional SEO. Instead of focusing on long tail, multi-word phrases, keywords should be adapted to follow the mobile search style. This means shorter keyword phrases, 3 words at most, with geographical information included in highly competitive phrases.
Although this strategy may be of limited importance for global companies, it will allow local businesses to rank for terms in mobile search that are beyond their wildest dreams in traditional SEO, and this is good news for small businesses. Remember to use the word “mobile” in your content.

Microsites
Microsites are an excellent opportunity to provide mobile search capability without revamping an entire site.
Microsites can be adapted to implement all of the best practices listed above, but can be made to focus solely on mobile users, enabling businesses to maintain a traditional homepage for the benefit of non-mobile rankings and users. When crafting your new mobile microsite, keep in mind that display options are crucial when approaching the mobile market. Factors such as image display size, use of java, and varied browser usage should be considered when designing your site.

Conclusion
After your mobile site is near to perfection, you need to submit your site map to search engines’ mobile indexes, then sit back and wait for you traffic to come. But there’s only one small problem with monitoring your traffic: it might not be possible. To track mobile search is not an easy task. Google Analytics, doesn’t work if mobile devices don’t execute JavaScript, making it extremely difficult to judge what traffic is coming from mobile sites and what traffic is coming from traditional SEO efforts. But Google is working on this issue and it will be solved in the future.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Mobile Marketing

Mobile is growing all around us. more than 450 million people worldwide used the mobile Web in 2009. Is your business doing anything to take advantage of these mobile opportunities?

It isn't as hard as you might think and the benefits could grow your business to a new level. For starters, you need to mobilize your website. Some companies choose to have separate websites for mobile, but they don’t need to. If you need assistance mobilizing your current site, there are tools available. On the other hand, if you do create a separate mobile site, be sure to include a link to it on your main page in order to give visitors an option.

When your site is mobilized, you need to get your customers involved with your mobile efforts. To do this, you should send text messages letting customers know about special discounts and offers. Make sure to set up a system for customers to "opt-in" to your mobile endeavors. This form of mobile marketing allows businesses to not only expand their business, but also to build stronger relationships with existing customers.

Finally, you need to make sure your customers can take action on your mobile site, that’s the purpose of your mobile campaign. Your website needs to be capable of taking electronic payments via cell phones so that mobile transactions can be made. An additional benefit of doing this is that you can send invoices in the form of email or text messages, which saves costs, paper, time, and perhaps the climate.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Google Gives Mobile Users Location Based Suggestions

Google has launched location-based search results for iPhone and Android mobile device users.

What this means is that people using these devices performing a regular search (not Google Maps) may be directed to geographic location-specific results for any number of queries. Google itself uses the example of museums.

You know how some businesses have ads that simply tell people to Google them? Perhaps there is some more incentive than meets the eye in that strategy.

Read more