• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 15, 2009

Mobile search and advertising company JumpTap has launched a pay-per-click ad service aimed at challenging Google AdWords and other mobile ad platforms.

The new tapMatch program allows marketers to target ads on mobile Web pages by keywords and other criteria including content, location, demographics, wireless operator, publisher and specific devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry. By showing more relevant ads, the system promises to deliver higher click-through rates and ROI for advertisers.

The platform draws on user search queries, browsing history and location information, among other data, to create audience profiles for matching display and text ads to the right mobile consumers. It also builds on JumpTap's other businesses including a premium mobile ad network and a white-label mobile search service.

The latest move also puts JumpTap more squarely in competition with Google AdWords, the search giant's performance-based ad system. Although tiny compared to Google, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company hopes to outshine its larger rival in the range of targeting options it offers through tapMatch.

In addition to keywords and content, AdWords also targets ads by location and language. In December, Google also announced it would extend AdWords to the iPhone, Android-powered phones and other devices with full HTML browsers.

Greg Sterling, who runs the local mobile search practice for Opus Research, said tapMatch "has several more layers of targeting than AdWords," including the ability to target other devices beyond the iPhone or Android phones. But he and other analysts suggest it will not pose a serious threat to the likes of Google or Yahoo.

"AdWords has the advantage of a huge installed base of marketers to draw upon," he said. "But it's still very early in the development of mobile advertising, and advertisers will likely be inclined to test tapMatch's features and targeting capabilities."

Google and Yahoo are not the only obstacles that JumpTap faces in expanding its mobile ad business. There are also a host of other mobile middlemen including AdMob, Quattro Wireless, Amobee and AOL's Third Screen Media. Among them, they offer various types of ad targeting and tracking as well as performance-based advertising.

"Several of the features offered by JumpTap, like ability to ensure that ads only appear on certain phones or on certain carriers, are already available via other solutions like AdMob," noted Deepa Karthikeyan, wireless data services analyst for technology research firm Current Analysis. In an interview with the mobile site MSearchGroove about its new PPC platform, JumpTap CMO Paran Johar stressed the company's partnerships with 17 mobile carriers as a competitive advantage. "You can't just go out and get 17 carrier relationships. You can't just go out and build a white-label search engine and utilize that technology for hyper-targeting. That kind of stuff takes years and years of development," he said.

But the big Internet players are all pushing aggressively into the mobile arena, notching exclusive search deals with the major carriers such as Yahoo with AT&T, Google with Sprint, and Verizon Wireless and Microsoft. Such partnerships have forced smaller companies like JumpTap to seek out alternative revenue sources, said Karthikeyan.