Google predicts ad revenue shift from web to mobiles
- Added:
- Feb 18, 2010
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt predicted a massive shift of adverting revenues from the fixed web to mobile platforms similar to that from print publications to the internet.
The change would happen because mobile advertising could be more precisely targeted, making it more effective, he said in a keyote at the Mobile World Congress, taking place this week in Barcelona.
“The reason is that we know more about the person [using the mobile]. For a start, we know where they are,” he said, referring to the fact that many handsets pack GPS and other location technologies.
Schmidt also echoed Ericsson chief Hans Vestberg’s warning that mobile pricing will have to change as speeds increased. “Operators will have to introduce some kind of tiered pricing to deal with the fact that one percent of the users consume 70 percent of the bandwidth,” he said.
He faced some hostile questions from the audience, most of whom were from the mobile industry. One accused Google of stealing from network operators with voice-over-IP services like Google Talk.
But Schmidt said this was consumer choice and it was up to the operators to find ways to make money from user behaviour. He pointed out that mobile operators have a billing arrangement with their customers to facilitate this.
Earlier he said that 60,000 handsets using Google’s Android operating system were shipping each day. And he called Erick Tseng, Google’s product manager for mobile search, on to the stage to demonstrate full Flash playing on an Android phone – stressing that it was mot Flash Lite.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said yesterday that Flash will not be supported by the new Windows Phone 7 platform, though Adobe would be free to implement it independently. Apple’s iPhone does not support Flash.
Also demonstrated was voice recognition in German, performed by Google computers in the cloud, and image searching. An Android phone snapped a picture of Barcelona’s famous Sangra Familia church and delivered search results relating to it.
Schmidt said the combination of handset power, fast wireless links, and the resources of the cloud, was creating a transition as great as that from the mainframe to the desktop. Google was not turning its back on the desktop but its watchword was: “The mobile is first.”
********************************
Get Netimperative updates on Twitter
