We might have known that it would only be a matter of time before the ubiquitous Google AdSense machine started to tie in to the mobile applications market. There has been a predictable explosion in interest for smartphone applications and it would seem that the sky is the limit. Downloadable applications proliferate for Apple iPhone and Android platforms.
Google is now moving into the mobile ad market following the testing of text and graphical ads in private beta. The web-behemoth has expanded its field testing and is playing with contextual ads for both platforms. According to Google the ads can be targeted by “applications, locations, categories or keywords.”
Program developers can insert a snippet of code within their applications, allowing iPhone and Android powered handsets to display ads. This effectively synchronizes the application with the Google ad network and opens up significant earning opportunities down the road.
One of the challenges associated with the approach is, as always, to get past the typical consumer “ad resistance”. Harold Steinberg, director of business development for Urbanspoon (one of Google’s startup development partners in the venture) concurs. “What we are looking for… is to allow the user to look at the whole application as one and not say, “oh, that’s an ad, I’m not going to pay attention to it.”” If the ad is successfully integrated within the application there is more chance that the consumer will interact with it thus allowing the application developer and Google to make money.
Whilst Google is keeping things small right now and only working in beta with a small number of highly qualified partners, it has (as usual) a clear advantage in this marketplace. When Google opens up and allows marketers to select mobile applications as part of their overall AdSense campaigns, bidding will increase significantly and ad rates will go up.
As the smart phone market experiences unprecedented growth and the future looks equally as rosy, expect there to be significant interest in this platform and good earnings potential. Mobile application usage is expected to quadruple in five years and Google is perhaps banking on the fact that those eyeballs will be drawn to mobile AdSense.
Have you started to use AdSense Applications on your iPhone? We would love to hear your feedback.
Matthew Toren
“Small Business, Big Vision provides a framework for you to unleash your driven and relentless passion to achieve unprecedented growth.”
The biggest problem is that smartphones have small screens. This means that the displayed ads might take up valuable program space. Integrating that seems like a daunting task, but if done right, it can be a very convenient way of making money from your (free) mobile applications.
Agree with your comment Jesse about the space problem …
it would be gr8 having ads compatible to view on smartphones and am sure it will help in generating and increase good revenue from this program.
I’ve been seeing this come up and yeah if you succeed you can make a hell lot of money with it. However, I see only developers succeeding in this, :lol:
Can one really get paid by promoting adsense ? I have added adsense to my blog for the past six months and my account balance is at about $10, is this normal or what ?
Sure, i truley believe that you can make money with adsense on a Iphone. There are millons of Iphones around.
Adward advertiser are not happy about the performance of their ads at google mobile applications. The main reason is, they don’t get a good conversion ration. They endup paying more with little sales.
I personally think that the screen is too small for such thing. Advertiser will best spend their money elsewhere.
Its a very interesting concept, and I do think you can make some money with this. I will give it a try. I agree with Jesse that it could be hard with the smaller screens. Thanks for the article Matthew.