Okay, so I was trying to be provocative with the title of this post.

I certainly don’t believe Google has conquered the Mobile content market, but I do agree with Russell Beattie’s notion that Google is playing catch-up, while companies like AdMob have the lead in the mobile content space.

Why the sudden need to expand mobile reach?

It seems Google has placed a great deal of emphasis on Adwords mobile for some time, and has not done a good job of helping publishers convert their online experiences to acceptable mobile experiences , this is exactly what Admob did to take the space by storm.

How this effects SEM’s

If you are a search marketer, you were probably alerted to the fact Google will be offering free mobile Adwords until November 18^th. This move was positioned to marketers as a great way to expand the reach of a current AdWords campaign.

What Google did not highlight was the fact that, if you don’t have a WAP site, the user experience provided will inevitably be unsatisfactory, and you will most likely waste ad dollars by driving consumers to pages that are virtually useless on a mobile device.

Google has provided best practices for creating a mobile web page. They also provided a way to preview what your page will look like on a handheld device. Still, Google did not do an adequate job of underscoring the importance of a few factors:

Ad Placement Visibility and Reporting

- As a search marketer, efficiency is of the utmost importance. At my agency we look where our ads are running on the Google Content Network and do our best to limit exposure to the Google Content Network when it is not working to our advantage.
- - I want the same transparency with Mobile ads. Adwords support center say the following:
  - - “The performance data for your text ads running on Google Mobile Search pages will be posted on a page that reads "Performance Data: Search Ads on Google Mobile Search." Please remember, your ads will only be shown if their landing pages can be adapted to fit on a mobile screen. These statistics will be incorporated into your overall account statistics starting November 19th.”
- I have two issue with this:
- - The language is very vague. Post November 19^th, will I not be able to see Mobile Search Reports broken out from other placements?
  - Google makes reference to landing pages that can be adapted. Google is already transcoding web pages for use on mobile devices. These trasncoded pages do not guarantee a good user experience; it just means that they are appropriating the page so it can be viewed on a mobile phone.
  - - With this transcoding your page may already fit into Google’s mobile requirements (making your page fit for Google Mobile ads) and you may not even know it.

Why Has Google Chosen To Go with Opt Out?

- Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience spoke of the tremendous growth Google saw this summer in the mobile space.
- - It is obvious that Google is making a push to take the lead in the mobile space and, the more ads there are in the Google Mobile Content Network, the more revenue there will be, the more motivation there is for content creators to appropriate their site for mobile… and so on, and so forth!

I applaud Google’s attempt to spur growth and innovation in the Mobile space. I just wish they were more forthcoming with how exactly this will play out.

Tags: Google, Mobile, Mobile Ads, Mobile Adwords, Marissa Mayer, WAP, Admob, Mobile Web, Free Adwords, Russe Beattie, Mobile Search