The debut of the iPhone 4 has created quite a stir for consumers worldwide trying to get the best and latest Apple product. The craze has even left some people waiting hours in line just to get the newest smart phone. But whether you are involved in the craze or not, the iPhone 4 and smart phones like it have the capability to influence you more than you may know.

For example, from an industry standpoint you may be wondering how does this affect me?  Other than the fact that you might personally want one of these smart phones, mobile phone advertising is quite different from your basic PPC ad. Most would assume that they show up the same regardless of the platform, they are actually very different.

Being the industry leader, Google is currently the only major search engine that offers full mobile advertising. For Google Mobile there are some minor requirement changes that your mobile PPC ads must adhere to differently than normal:okay

-Ad Format: Mobile Ads only allow three lines of text: the headline, one description line, and one url/number line that allows the advertiser to have a one url or phone number link for their customers to connect to.

-Character Limit: Due to the smaller size of your mobile phone, the size of you PPC advertisement will also appear smaller. The character limits of your headline and description line are 18 characters each, with a total of 36 characters for the entire advertisement.

While the differences remain structural, the advantages that mobile ads have will eventually become a big factor for advertisers and customers alike. Advertisers will be able to attract customers with a new form of advertisement. And customers will be able to easily connect to products that they find appealing from the convenience of their phone.

Adwords, Google, Google AdWords, Mobile, mobile phone, Online Marketing, PPC

When asked what can be expected from Google search in 2009, Google’s Matt Cutts said it will be “The big year for the mobile phone.”  Matt Cutts Interview

I can definitely see this happening. Everywhere I look people are playing with their iPhones. I can name 4 people in our office alone that have purchased one in the last month.  Apple and AT&T are making record sales and I have no doubt that these mobile phones are going to be big in 2009.

So what does all of this mean for the future online marketing?  We have been told time and time again that mobile phones are going to be the new marketing media of the future. If 2007 wasn’t the “The big year for the mobile phone” then it was 2008. Or was it?

However, a big change did happen on December 8, 2008 when the Google team announced a new campaign-level option that allows AdWords advertisers to show desktop text and image ads on the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and other mobile devices with full (HTML) Internet browsers. These ads point to desktop landing pages so that it is unnecessary to create mobile landing pages or ads in mobile formats. This allows advertisers to display ads exclusively on these mobile devices, create campaigns for them, and get separate performance reporting. Google Mobile Article

 I see this change as Google’s first step in progressing mobile advertising. Now that advertisers can target mobile devices with HTML internet browsers the next step logical step would be to integrate the click to call function into full length Adwords ads. I also believe Google has big plans for the T-Mobile G1 to compete with the iPhone. Then what about Application advertising? My favorite iPhone feature is the applications function; but how would Google advertise on applications?  Maybe Google will create a type of application network similar to the content network. This would allow ads to be easily managed within the Google Adwords account. These are some of the changes that I hope Matt Cutts is talking about when he says that 2009 is going to be “The year of the mobile phone”.

g1, iphone, mobile advertising, mobile phone