Google targets in-app advertising

While mobile advertising has so far proven something of a slow burn, the rise of the app store in 2009 is expected to bring in-application advertising to the forefront of the industry.

Google, with its vested interest in mobile via the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and the Android platform, is already making headway in this particular area, and is targeting app store pioneer Apple too.

On Wednesday, the web giant opened up the beta version of its AdSense platform for mobile applications.

AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads inside iPhone and Android applications.

“Advertisers are looking for ways to reach potential customers when they are engaged with mobile content, and application developers are looking for ways to show the best ads to their users. We have already had a successful trial of this service with a small number of partners,” said Google.

The latest wave of smartphones, with Apple’s iPhone at its crest, certainly offers a wider range of potential forms of engagement. Rival mobile advertising firm Admob serves adverts onto around 40 per cent of the world’s iPhones, Thomas Schulz, the firm’s managing director for EMEA, told telecoms.com recently.

“A lot of the ads we’re doing on the iPhone are running in applications because, in the iPhone world at least, apps have a big chunk of the traffic,” he says. “You have more visually appealing models like trailers, revolving canvasses. You occupy the page and you can link to a click to call or a map, whatever you want. What we’ve seen in terms of click through on these ads on the iPhone is a multiple of what we’re used to because the ads are more appealing.”

Revenues are also higher than the norm, Schulz says. “There’s a very wide range but, in general, it’s definitely making more money. It generates more money for the publisher, that’s for sure.”

Google has posted a video of Howard Steinberg, director of business development at developer Urbanspoon, talking about in-app advertising.