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Smartphones Pave Way For Mobile Advertising

  • Reuters, Friday, February 20, 2009 10:45 AM
Thanks to the surging popularity of smartphones like Apple's iPhone, mobile advertising has finally gotten the boost that it so badly needed. At least that's what mobile industry executives claim, speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Smartphones, they say, make surfing the Web an everyday occurrence, opening the way for advertising on phones. Another innovation, the application store-also popularized by Apple-, should become another ad revenue source for mobile phone operators and handset makers, as well as the application makers.

However, operators hoping for an immediate boost to revenues "should likely not hold their breath, as analysts and executives believe the majority of advertising dollars will go to the publishers such as Google who already dominate the Web." Despite the promise of mobile advertising, promoters of the medium have found that it's easy to clutter the phone's small screen with display ads. Getting around this problem has proved to be harder than expected. That, and a lack of standards across the industry in how operators, handset makers, and ad agencies measure ad units, means the industry is still a ways from taking off. Still.

Read the whole story at Reuters »

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