New AdWords options for iPhone and G1
Today, the Google mobile ads team is announcing a new campaign-level option that allows those of you who are AdWords advertisers to show your desktop text and image ads on the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and other mobile devices with full (HTML) Internet browsers.
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement extends Google's mobile advertising push beyond the publisher side. In September 2007, Google had launched AdSense for Mobile to monetize the mobile web from the content side; a year later, opening AdWords campaigns to the iPhone and T-Mobile G1 brings advertisers themselves into that market. The timing matters because both devices ship with full HTML browsers, collapsing the old distinction between 'desktop' and 'mobile' ad inventory.
First-order effects
- AdWords advertisers can now opt in at the campaign level to serve their existing desktop text and image ads on full-browser smartphones like the iPhone and G1 — no separate creative required.
- Google immediately expands its addressable ad inventory to the fastest-growing smartphone segment, giving early iPhone/G1 traffic a monetization path.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers gain cheap incremental reach on high-value devices, which pressures rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft's ad platforms to build comparable full-browser mobile targeting or cede premium smartphone inventory to Google.
- As more campaigns flow into mobile slots, Google gets real-world data on click behavior on touchscreens — groundwork for later mobile-specific formats such as click-to-call billing announced in 2010.
Third-order effects
- If desktop ads render acceptably on full-browser phones, the industry's assumption of separate mobile/desktop ad products erodes, pushing toward unified auctions where device is just another targeting signal.
- Smartphone adoption becomes an advertising story: every new full-browser handset sold directly grows Google's auction inventory, aligning its ad business with (and incentivizing) the smartphone boom.
The trend: The shift toward treating full-browser smartphones as first-class advertising inventory — one early step in the long convergence of desktop and mobile ad markets that Google has continued building out ever since.