Mobile Advertising In Applications Still Premature

Mobile advertising is the new buzz word for smartphone applications. Google mobile ads are apple iAd are the solutions available for Android and iPhone respectively. Broadly there are two types of mobile advertising today. One form is ads being generated as part of a browser search query and the other one is where ads pop-up as part of an application. The former is very similar to ads that one would see while using the Google search on a PC. Since a mobile phone as the ability to make calls unlike a typical PC, phone numbers are published along with the Ad. For example, if the search query is pizza, then the search results can show a listing of the closest Pizza Hut along with a phone number which the user can click, to initiate a call directly from the browser window. The publisher of the Ad would now pay in a PPC (Pay Per Call) model vs. the traditional CPC (Cost Per Click) model. The later which is mobile application advertising is where a publisher of an application can sign up for ads within the application. This mode can also have the PPC and CPC models of payments by the advertisers.

Gingerbread taking Android to the masses

In my previous article titled “Fragmentation in Android: Boon or Bane”, I discussed the various aspects of fragmentation in Android and how it impacts the respective parties involved. The article was written before the release of Gingerbread. Gingerbread is now out. As with each Android release Gingerbread has its own compatibility definition published by Google at http://source.android.com. There is an interesting turn that Google has taken in this compatibility definition which is discussed in this article. This change in the compatibility definition can help OEMs reduce the BOM (Bill Of Materials) thereby enabling them to produce devices at lower costs.