Apple, Google, and the mobile ads
April 13, 2010
Before the end of the last week Chris Nuttal and Richard Waters wrote about the battle that’s about to begin between Apple, and Google on the mobile ads.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b1476de-434a-11df-9046-00144feab49a.html
Apple is moving ahead on their own ad network – iAd. It is going to be very interesting to see what Apple can do with their offering for this market — in my opinion, it’s actually going to be kind of hard for them to gain some footing in the near future.
For Google Ad words, it’s a mature product and successfully becoming a cash cow for Google, it’s pretty easy to use it now and create an advertisement – two lines of text and an icon if you want. From my research on iAd, apparently it wouldn’t be that easy to create an ad.
There aren’t many things that Apple completely fails at, however iAd targets completely different customers other than what Apple has right now, they are with high standards, including a really good and established channel, powerful tools to measure their success, and cost effectiveness.
The pricing model for Google Adwords is based on an auction on words, Apple has not announced yet how it’s going to be on iAd but they have to come up with a very creative pricing model that can attract customers from Google.
Over the last year the tension between Google and Apple went to a different level when Google released a new mobile with almost the same capabilities of an iPhone, it has been considered a real competition for iPhone. With Apple’s entrance to the advertisement market and taking some shares from Google, Apple would reach strategic position that might put them in a better position in negotiating partnerships with other supporting sectors.
Now there’s already a fight on acquiring the big mobile and web ad agencies, Apple already tried to acquire AdMob but Google came in between to prevent it from happening, and now lawyers at FTC (Federal trade commission) are working on assembling evidence to build a case to block Google’s acquisition of AdMob. It seems like the next few years will be full of changes in the web and mobile advertisement market that will bring up new opportunities and investments.
