Two things come out at me from this article, about Google moving towards a hyperlocal ad revenue stream
1) Before, I would have said this was a major invasion of privacy, using the phones GPS unit, or triangulating the location using the cell towers, to send out local ads to Google results. But really, this is useful for a lot of people. While many searches done today are not necessarily location-dependent, those who are searching on the go, on their mobile devices, probably care about the distance to what they are searching for. From personal experience, I know that when I Google something on the go, it’s because I’m curious as to its location. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to be on google.com – I usually do this in the Maps application, which is supposed to be able to access the GPS unit and NOT necessarily store my searches and connect it to my google screenname. hmm, sounds like I’m being suspicious, but I’m not! i think it’s great to allow for local searching. Trust me. I’ll all for it.
2) Googles comment about how they envision the majority of their revenue coming from mobile searches. Interesting comment – I wonder how they quantify this. Do they have a projection setup predicting the number of mobile users in the future compared to desktop users? I supposed they’ve seen more traffic coming in from mobile versions of popular browsers – how do they account for users of the Google mobile app? When I did a brief research project on user perceptions of mobile device usage, I found that people were still using Google SMS to do their searches for them. I’m not too familiar with this, but I imagine Google doesn’t get much, if any, revenue for this…do they sell your number to get revenue?
Anyway…I, for one, look forward to our Overlord Google dominating us. I say this while I Google news articles in Google Chrome…
Hyper local is a powerful tool for both advertisers and consumers. For both groups they are concerned with relevance. Consumers want useful results and advertisers want effective results. Location is another data point that the ad servers believe they can use to improve the performance of the search results.
As I’m sure you know, the more datapoints that an adserving company has about you, the deeper it’s “profile” is about you. They utilize this profile to present ads and results that they believe are relevant to you. Now where I am fearful is when the profile is wrong. I remember for a whole month I kept seeing ads and sponsored results for stuff on a particular subject. Why? Because I had done a couple days of research on a subject for a friend. Every site I went to that was affiliated somehow with that search engine kept dishing up ads based on this “profile”.
“hyperlocal” does happen with your physical junk mail. I get junk mail based upon my zip code. My previous house was less than a mike away and the junk mail I get there is completely different than the stuff at my new house. Why? Differrent zip code which means different demographics ie profile.
Now as for mobile ads being a large source of revenue, I agree based on the industry reports I have seen. Several research and insldustry bodies all show that there is a very high rate of adoption of mobile devices. You can look at work by idc, forester, ctia, and cisco, among others. There Re more mobile devices out there then computers. With people who do have both, they spend more time with their mobile devices. Then take into account the adoption of Internet enabled mobile devices (no longer just smart phones) and you can surmise how large the mobile search market can be.
There are a couple other interesting trends to keep in mind. One is the increase in Aps and the other is in software revenue models. First Aps are becoming a more common way to access the “Internet”. Browser based access is projected to be a minor way to get to the Net. Second trend concerns ad supported software distribution models. A growing trend is “free” software that derives revenue from in game advertising. What data points do you have to create a profile of the user? Could location be one since they arent “searching” for something?
And finally you had made a comment about how people know source of a user. Most browsers will provide a server with several pieces of data so you can tell more about the user’s access method. -either explicitly or inferred-, ie browser, OS, and IP. Take a look at that data, it’s pretty interesting.
Darn I forgot to talk about privacy. Oh well , it’s usually a bad idea to have a comment longer than the original post.
lol. Could you have written a LONGER comment? Yikes…
Thanks for the comment though.
As for Apps, they have to be a worthwhile revenue stream – or else all those free apps out there wouldn’t exist (i mean those that are ad-supported).
In a recent Wired article, they talked about the demise of the Web, and focused on app-centric ways to access the internet and how it is stealing the focus from the web. Very interesting – you should give it a read.