The rise of mobile precision

Google’s recent announcement regarding the Open Handset Alliance provides an interesting glimpse into where personalized advertising is headed. One of the basic issues is how much time will consumers spend accessing the web from a mobile device vs. a desktop or laptop device? Mobile devices are convenient, but if you’re after serious information or entertainment, a larger screen is definitely the way to go. On the other hand, the demographic profile of mobile users indicates that this market is going to expand considerably as the overall population ages and is displaced by a mobile-centric mindset. So why is Google throwing its considerable weight around? Any space on-line is potential advertising territory for them, whether mobile or otherwise, and of course the amount of real estate available on your handset for an ad is a lot smaller than your average PC screen. Which means a fundamental shift in how the user interface is designed and interacts with the end users (the primary thrust of the Open Handset Alliance). Apple has already given the market a strong taste of what’s possible with the iPhone, so the question that’s driving the Google ecosystem now is how to monetize a significantly smaller space.

Which comes back to the point I’ve been making for the past several weeks. Personalization, driven by a multitude of factors such as psychometrics, demographic, financial/transactional , even web surfing behavioral metrics are all viable options for targeting ads very precisely. Once you put this into in a mobile context, you can fold in geo-spatial information, then it gets to the point of knowing who you are, where you are, and most likely why you are in a specific location. Knowing all that means that highly relevant, location specific ads can be served up based on what you’re most likely to want. Example: you go to the local mall, all of which are set up for wireless internet. The advertiser (e.g. Nordstroms), knows you and has previous purchase history on you. You walk into a mall with a Nordstroms and suddenly ads show up on your mobile browser saying there’s a sale on something you recently looked at (but didn’t buy) on their website. Like I’ve said, people like spending money, and reaching them with a relevant ad when they’re actually out in a mall and ready to spend will be a very good use of the advertiser’s money.