Preparing for the Big mobile revolution

A week ago more than 750 digital leaders gathered in Florida (America) for the annual IAB leadership meeting where they discussed the most significant topics of the current interactive advertising industry. In Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech, he delivered a message concerning the advertising power of mobile. Eric made heavy use of statistics gained from the recent Super Bowl and how the extremely expensive advertisements affected mobile search displaying a powerful impact.

In fact, this seems to link together well with a short article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review about how 2011 is the year of mobile. And Google seems to be aiming that way like few others.

The recent Super Bowl event was a tremendous chance for advertisers as it’s one of the few occasions with such a broad audience actually watching for advertisements. In other words: sinking or swimming on that advertisement slot meant a lot. During his speech Schmidt quoted search rates to support his argument that mobile is becoming the next big thing. He specifically contrasted mobile searches versus those on fixed internet devices like computers. For example, Chrysler searches boosted 102 times during the game on mobile, where as desktop searches only topped off at 48 times. Obviously people are more likely to be in the vicinity of their smartphone than they are likely to be with their desktop computer.

Eric also spoke about how people bring their smartphones along with them when they go shopping. Instead of dragging heavy catalogues along from other stores to compare prices, shoppers now can just pull out their smartphone, pop up their favourite consumer reports website and get informed. Needless to say, Schmidt is quite happy with this sort of emerging behaviour. This will probably make Google, as the gatekeeper of search and cheap smart phones, very busy and certainly quite happy.