Apple May Challenge in Advertising
September 28, 2010
Google is mostly about advertising revenue, not search, in my opinion. The shift took place sometime in the 2006 and 2007 period. My yardstick continues to be Google’s technical documents in open source. These include patent applications, blog posts, and published papers.
Now Business Week has added some information that indicates a possible weakness in not just Google’s grip on the increasingly important mobile online ad market but also Microsoft’s and other companies’ prospects. “Apple Threatens Search Giants’ Mobile Ad Shares” reported:
Apple may be gaining share in the U.S. mobile advertising market this year at the expense of Google and Microsoft. Apple will end the year with 21 percent of the market, according to estimates provided to Businessweek.com by researcher IDC. Google’s share will drop to 21 percent, from 27 percent last year, when combined with results from AdMob, the ad network it bought in May. Microsoft will drop to 7 percent, from 10 percent.
These type of data are almost always interesting and based on methods that are not described in detail. Let’s assume that the Apple iAd system is operating as described. Business Week notes that no company is a slam dunk.
Nevertheless, our view of these data is that the company most likely to be encouraged by the write up is not Apple. Apple understands the value of its customer base and its methods of providing access to Apple’s customers.
Our take is that Facebook is in an ideal position to leverage its “members” and the data the company has about these individuals. With Google’s approach relatively well known and Apple’s becoming increasingly clear, Facebook can sit back, tweak its online ad offerings, and use a “me too” approach when its mobile tactics become a reality later this year.
Will Apple’s push into social with its somewhat overly visible “Ping” link help Apple cope with Facebook? Can Google respond to the social dominance of Facebook and the Apple hardware/software ecosystem in rich media?
We don’t know the answer, but Google may be the company with most significant challenge. And what happens to search? The odds seem to be rising that search will become the servant of online advertising. Search is a means to generate ad revenue, not a way to help users solve an information problem. If we are correct, this is an important moment in findability. Any pretense to objectivity in public Web search results may be swept away.
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2010
Freebie
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
