What the Smartphone War Means for Search Advertisers
by Tim LaGrone ~ January 29th, 2010 |
In a recent post, I covered what took place on Google’s press call for the Nexus One and how the device sizes up against the iPhone. There has been plenty of talk around many smartphone releases and whether each one would be the iPhone killer. This brings us to the natural question of what does great competition for Apple’s smartphone and smartphone wars at large mean for advertisers? As marketers, we need to get that discussion going.
But before I jump into the implications of the smartphone war, let’s quickly recap life before the iPhone.
The chart below shows us that search access from the mobile browser was pretty flat until the inception of the iPhone in June of 2007. And for the most part, it has been on a steady incline since.
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December 7, 2009 Google launched real-time results and it changed the world of SEO as we all knew it. After reading the news and experiencing it for myself, I was left with a few questions. Does the change present more positive or negative implications to the art and science of SEO? How do I, as an online marketer specializing in SEO, continue to tout to clients the value of SEO and importance of showing up in organic search? In regards to whether the implications are positive or negative, as usual in the world of SEO, it’s a draw. Depending on who you talk to, the answer can go either way. On the other topic though, the vote was almost unanimous; we maintain our value by refocusing what we report as important, and draw inferences on visibility and rank.
There was much speculation of an official Google phone to challenge the smartphone champion (iPhone) even before the launch of the first Android device, the G1. The Nexus One was introduced this week during a private web conference lead by Google’s Vice President of Product Management, Mario Queiroz, after a month of an intense buzz across the web. During the press conference, the audience seemed discouraged because Google was not being as aggressive with their advertising as Motorola/Verizon was with the Droid. I felt the same way until I witnessed their impressive banner advertising push first-hand. When “Nexus One” also made it as a trending topic on Twitter, and as one of the top searches in Yahoo, my doubts were soon demolished.
Lately we’ve been hearing more and more about Real-Time Search but what about Real-Time Inventory or Real-Time Local Shopping? There is local product search engine called Milo.com that is becoming more prominent in the search space. This type of search is perfect for those of us that wait until the very last minute to do our shopping, whether it’s for birthdays or anniversaries. What is excellent about this search engine, is that it not only tells you what stores carry a particular item, but it also tells you if the item is in stock or not. It doesn’t stop there either. 
