Should you advertise on iPhones?

I get it that not everyone owns an iPhone or smartphone, but there are a lot of people who do, and they’re using their smartphones for business and pleasure (as well as making the odd phone call).

With the proliferation of iPhone apps available from the iTunes store, many app developers have allowed space for advertisements to help generate some revenue from their development work (especially for the free apps).

The company which dominates the placement of these adverts on apps is AdMob, which by the way, was recently purchased by (who else) Google for $750 million dollars late last year.

I’ve kept an eye on AdMob for a while and have decided that for the next few weeks we’ll run some ad’s and see how it works – and try and see if it’s an effective platform to advertise on.

I’ve seen Telstra, McDonald’s and Coke ads advertising on various apps, so the ‘big guys’ are giving it a go (probably after been talked into it by their respective agencies!). But hey, it may actually be effective as an advertising platform.

It is funny though when you see an Ad for McDonald’s on a sports app (in my case, RunKeeper). And from my experience it does seem that the targeting of AdMob ads by advertisers is pretty ordinary.

It’s been possible to advertise on mobiles using Google AdWords, but frankly, it’s rubbish as a platform. It’s all mystery and no transparency in my opinion.

Looking at the back end of AdMob’s system, so far there’s a lot to like as an advertiser.

There’s a bewildering array of device targeting; you’ll have no shortage of options in terms of which phone you want to target your ads towards. Mind you I haven’t figured out why you’d want to target just people who own a certain brand and model number of a mobile phone, so if someone can give us an example scenario, that’d be great. Maybe it’s got something to do with advertising games or ringtones?

You can create short, text ads (usually only 25 characters long mind you), as well as upload graphical banners in various sizes for display.

In addition, you can also target demographically; there are similarities between Facebook ads and AdMob ads in this regard.

After you’ve selected the ‘what, where and who’ elements of your campaign, all you need to do next is get creative and either write your own text ad or upload a banner to fit.

You can upload your own icon, then pick which apps you’d like to advertise on. The final thing to do is set your budget and you’re away.

Should be interesting to see how they perform.

Stay tuned.

For more Online Sales expert advice, click here.

Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation  company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.