When Glu Mobile launched an ad campaign in February to sell its wireless games, the company at first ran ads on five mobile Internet networks, including those managed by Google and Yahoo.
After just one day, Glu decided the program needed tweaking, says Rick Armstrong, Glu’s senior digital marketing manager.
“Three we kept going and two we turned off, and the two we turned off were Yahoo and Google because they were at the bottom in effectiveness,” he said.
Internet kingpins Google and Yahoo have scrambled to bring their Internet services to the mobile platform, striking deals with wireless carriers worldwide to reach the growing millions of consumers who access the Internet on mobile devices.
Along with the services, of course, they also want to bring along their moneymaking ads.
But attacking the mobile market is no slam dunk. They compete with a growing number of companies that operate solely in the mobile space.
The mobile ad market is the Internet ad market of 10 years ago, says Greg Sterling, principal at Sterling Market Intelligence.
A ‘Wild West’ Period
“It’s the Wild West period for the mobile Internet,” he said. “It’s like the early days of the Internet where everybody is scrambling for scale and share. It’s still very much in development.”
For Glu, Google and Yahoo took a back seat to three little-known companies: Jumptap, AdMob and Millennial Media. They all operate their own ad networks — broker and place ads — on mobile devices.
Companies that focus exclusively on the mobile ad market have an edge over their Web rivals, says Brennan Hayden, vice president of WDA, which helps companies bring their online content such as games and ring tones to mobile devices.
“Over time there will probably be some equalization, but for now it’s a classic case of the specialized firms getting better results,” Hayden said.
The mobile ad market works much the same as the conventional Internet ad market. Advertisers bid on search keywords or phrases, getting better placement the more they bid. The ads appear when users search for a product, service or anything using those keywords. The advertiser pays only when a consumer clicks on the ad.
But the mobile market presents hurdles.
One issue, say analysts, is adapting search ads to fit the small screens of mobile devices.
People used to seeing search ads on the top or to the right of search results on a PC are in for a surprise when they use a mobile device, Armstrong says.
This Article was found on: Investors.com
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