
The Mobile Paradox - iProject
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/mobile-paradox/
======
lazyBilly
You guys are missing the point. The problem with mobile is not the ads, it's
return on investment. I make mobile apps, and if my profit on a one dollar app
is 70 cents, that's a hard limit on my customer acquisition spend. Which is
why we don't use admob any more. The clicks are there, they're just not worth
much.

------
veyron
The reality is that ads really have to be Re-envisioned for the mobile space.
There's not enough real estate on a phone to put up massive banner ads on a
phone, and there's good reason to believe we will see something similar to iAd
for android and windows phone (which will benefit the handset and OS guys)

What I expect to see is a new wave of mobile utilities that approach
advertising differently, integrating into the workflow rather than the real
estate model of the web.

~~~
eli
I think you're right about having new, different ways to integrate
advertising, but don't forget that (compared to the web) it's _much_ easier to
charge the user directly.

~~~
rollypolly
Also, like pre-Tivo television, it's harder to ignore interstitial ads.

For better or worse, I can picture of future of free smart phones with
unignorable interstitials.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
This was the concept for the google-phone pre 2007 iPhone launch if memory
serves...

~~~
eli
That was definitely the rumor, but I think it was mostly speculation along the
lines of: Google makes their money from ads, so of course their phone will be
wall-to-wall ads.

------
alecco
Are these pieces paid for? The writer's company link (just.me) takes to a very
crude homepage with an un-styled Google Spreadshet form requesting
subscriptions.

There's nothing new in this article and a lot of speculation.

~~~
heyitsnick
> Are these pieces paid for?

Michael Arrington is a just.me investor.

<http://just.me/2012/01/seed-and-a-round-funding/>

------
joejohnson
Wow, there are a lot of typos and grammar errors in this piece. I don't want
to sound pedantic, but the article was kind of hard to read.

However, I think that the thesis about mobile in some ways replacing older
internet ad paradigms is true. Especially in emerging markets, mobiel internet
is the dominant platform for most applications.

------
hollerith
So apparently, since mobile devices use much smaller screens, it is hard to
put an ad and content together on the much smaller screen without annoying the
user, and Google has not yet figured out a workaround.

~~~
technoslut
I may agree with you on a basic level but this is far more trouble for Google
than it seems.

Mobile apps are incredibly inexpensive compared to their desktop counterparts
and a user will always prefer less ads.

Facebook's plan for mobile ads is to embed them in a user's news feed. Google
can't do this with search or they will completely poison it along with G+
results.

All relevant info suggests that consumers are using dedicated apps for search
and Google can't buy every startup to compete against Amazon, Apple and
Facebook.

------
pascalr
So, what's the paradox? I just skimmed over the article, but found nothing
about one...

