A look back at 2011
Mobile turned a corner this year. As smartphones and tablets became a part of our everyday lives, business owners' conversations shifted from ‘Why should I advertise on mobile or build a mobile website?’ to ‘How do I get started?’. — Five major industry trends emerged …
Context & Ripple Effects
This year-end post closes an arc Google itself opened. In September 2007 it launched AdSense for Mobile to unlock the mobile ad market ([[a:1180026]]), and in January 2011 Eric Schmidt framed the whole company around it, declaring that all of Google's strategic initiatives for 2011 were mobile ([[a:1189787]]). ReadWriteMobile's 10 Mobile Trends for 2011 published days later read like a forecast; this retrospective is Google grading that forecast from the sell side.
First-order effects
- Small-business advertisers are the named audience: Google reports their questions have flipped from 'why advertise on mobile' to 'how do I get started', which converts mobile from an experiment into a budgeted line item they now expect Google's ad tools to serve.
- For Google, the shift validates the mobile-first strategy Schmidt set out in January 2011 and puts pressure on its own monetization — a February report pegged revenue at roughly $10 per Android user in 2012 ([[a:1190160]]), a gap between usage and spend that 'how do I start' demand is meant to close.
Second-order effects
- Publishers and agencies that spent 2011 debating mobile websites now face clients arriving with intent rather than skepticism, forcing them to productize mobile builds or cede the on-ramp to self-serve platforms like Google's.
- Rival ad sellers must match the framing: once the dominant search advertiser declares the 'why' debate settled, holding onto 'why' pricing discounts becomes commercially untenable.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile advertising consolidates around whoever owns the small-business on-ramp — tools, templates, and measurement — rather than around inventory alone, echoing the structure AdSense built for desktop in 2007.
- A market where adoption questions have shifted to execution questions typically pulls regulators and industry bodies toward standards for mobile measurement and privacy, since mainstream spend demands comparable metrics.
The trend: Mobile advertising crossed from speculative channel to default line item in 2011, with platform owners competing to own the small-business on-ramp.