Okay, Everyone In The Pool!!
Google announced recently that they’re going to start running advertisements from their existing pool of Adwords ads against mobile pages by transcoding the pages for advertisers so that they’re usable from mobile devices. I can see it being a really touchy subject, Omar has his take and Russ has his take. There are probably some fundamental differences that might never come together on this one.
Me, I see it as the difference between inviting everyone to a dinner party and offering them the use of the pool if they want to go in. And inviting everyone to a dinner party and having the bouncers grab everyone and toss them in the pool half way through the main course. I mean who doesn’t like a good pool party, right? You would have to be insane. But getting unceremoniously tossed in is still bound to make a few people mad, there are just nicer ways to get the same thing done. At least they’re not charging for the clicks until November 19th. I guess that’s kinda like tossing folks into the shallow end rather than the deep end. I’m just imagining the support nightmare some of the advertisers are headed into:
- “I’m having trouble registering on your site.”
- - No problem, are you using Windows?
- “No, I’m on Sprint.”
- - What kind of browser are you using?
- “I don’t know, whatever the one on my phone is.”
- - What kind of phone do you have?
- “The one that’s 75 dollars with a two year contract, it’s got a green swirl on it.”
Sure you don’t have to pay for the clicks, but I could see this being far from a “free” experiment. I do hope I’m wrong though, if they can kick open the door to a whole boatload of mobile advertisers and get additional users in, I’ll be a happy camper no matter what. Even if it makes my day job harder. I’m just a glutton for punishment like that.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
[...] was the last day of the free ads on mobile search on Google, and I have to admit I haven’t heard a single peep about the program after the initial [...]