Somewhat Debunking The Mobile Ad Rendering Myth
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, September 15, 2009
The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) recently released a study stating some of those challenges and benefits. One in particular struck a chord with Google. Some might call this particular challenge a myth, especially when it comes to rendering ads on Apple's iPhone, Palm's PalmPre, and any phone running Google's operating system Android.
A Google spokesperson says sites optimized for iPhones should render the same on Android, and vice versa, more often than not. "The browsers in iPhones, Android phones and the PalmPre are all based on the WebKit engine, which means each browser renders the Web in similar ways," he says.
The iPhone, Android and PalmPre browsers all use the same rendering engine, known as WebKit. Since iPhone, Android and PalmPre use the same WebKit engine, most Web sites retrieved from these browsers should look the same on each phone. This, in turn, makes it easier for marketers to run ads on more than one phone.
WebKit has become the unofficial standard in the smartphone market, providing people with a "superior browsing experience," according to Don Reisinger at CNet.com. In August, Torch Mobile, a WebKit developer, announced that it has been acquired by Research In Motion (RIM) for an undisclosed sum.
Still, many in the industry still believe mobile advertising is too complicated, in part, because of the sheer number of handsets, browsers and ways to render content and ads. Unique device-specific browsers and a variety of other challenges have deterred marketers from developing mobile campaigns. Having one standard could advance mobile advertising much more quickly.
Thanks Laurie! This issue is very important and all the mobile companies should listen up and take action across lines of competition to create an official standard. At the Aberdeen CMO conference last week we heard Mike Indursky, CMO for Burts Bees (number 1 lip balm in US!), talk about how he helped bring his competitors together to create a standard for "natural" products. Good for the consumer and good for business.
It is good news that technologies like WebKit browsers on iPhone-like devices and Html 5 browser support are bringing richer, desktop-like standards and functionality to mobile devices. Advances like these should help lower the barrier to entry for marketers. It is also possible that flash technology (the leading ad standard on desktop browsers) may become more prevalent in mobile in the next 2 years. Flash ads reduce the complexity of serving an ad on different browsers. The Android HTC Hero phone has built-in Flash (not Flash Lite) support and should be shipping into the US soon.
The bad news is that mobile device and browser fragmentation is still a significant issue today. For example, location aware ads on the iPhone enable users to locate the nearest store without explicitly entering their zip code. This technology leverages the iPhone’s HTML 5 capabilities. The Palm Pre and G1 Google Phone support other HTML 5 capabilities but not location detection unfortunately.
That said, marketers should not hold back from mobile advertising today. They should be careful in choosing a technology company with specialized mobile expertise. Many ad campaign technology companies are expanding into mobile but I question how much they really know about this space. An effective ad technology company will make it easy on the marketer to reach their campaign goals without worrying about underlying technology issues.