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New ad format may be precusor to free wireless

A new product from Google drops image advertisements onto mobile devices, as they push the marketing side of their mobile efforts.

Google's work on mobile phones doesn't stop with its development of the Android platform. With millions of phones in people's pockets around the world, Google wants to reach into those pockets too and root around for some spare change.

They will do this with recently announced mobile image ads, the next step up from text advertising. At the Google Mobile blog, Google opened up the product in the US, China, Japan, and several other countries.

Publishers catering to mobile web browsers will have a choice of displaying image or text ads to visitors. Only one mobile image ad goes on display to arriving browsers, to keep from interfering with the experience.

Google only delivers these mobile image ads on a cost per click basis; if a CPM model is in the works, they have not disclosed this yet. We expect that to change once the major brand name companies who are doing mobile advertising now opt to push the envelope and make a real drive to promote a given product.

We also see this as an additional step towards Google's potential work in delivering content in the unused white spaces of the 700MHz wireless spectrum that will be freed up in 2009. Google and several other companies want to take advantage of an FCC rule allowing open devices on that whitespace to deliver wireless broadband connectivity.

Better mobile advertising options give Google more flexibility in delivering wireless service this way at a nominal cost to people, or even at no consumer cost. Google also has a deal in place with Sprint to provide that company's portal for the in-development Xohm high-speed wireless service; mobile image ads would fit into that effort too.