[By:  Braden Russom, Senior Project Manager for Burst Marketing.]

Google announced recently that after six months of negotiations by the FTC, they’ve purchased mobile advertising giant AdMob. In the same way that Google’s purchase of YouTube made them the De Facto owner of the huge majority of web video ‘eyeshare’, Their purchase of AdMob makes them the biggest player in the mobile phone marketing world. Their closest follower is Apple, whose recent purchase of Quattro Wireless has enabled them to develop the iAd, their own proprietary advertising platform that will power all the ads for iPhone, iPod and iPad applications.

What’s this mean for Albany? The potential for advertising innovation is right in the hands of savvy, forward thinking marketers.

Division of Attention

At Burst, we’ve noticed a drastic shift in attention share over the last 10 years. Suddenly, people aren’t as easy to catch. They’re not just sitting in front of the TV watching reruns. Now they’re checking facebook on their iPad while they ride the bus to work. If they’re like me, they’re using productivity apps to check their tasks for the day, and see what meetings they have scheduled for the day. Or they’re texting friends in between games of paper toss on their iPod (sounds dumb, but trust me – it’s super fun).

This all translates to less attention spent on each message, and a greater need for marketers to surround the customer with their message.

Mobile Advertising gives us an in. It allows us to get our message to the customer no matter where they go. By selectively targeting the right applications, and carefully crafting messages, marketers can “catch up” to their newly mobile audience. That’s only going to get more powerful as iPhone and Android (Google’s Mobile Phone Brand) sales keep moving up.

According to a recent web article in Britain’s Financial times;

“Sales of Android phones, which include Google’s own Nexus One and Motorola’s Droid, accounted for just under 10 per cent of all smartphones sold globally in the first quarter of 2010, up from just 1.6 per cent last year, according to figures from Gartner, the technology research group.”

The same article also had this to say:

“Android phone sales have also overtaken Apple’s iPhone in the North American market, accounting for 26.6 per cent of units sold, compared with 22.1 per cent for the iPhone.”

You read that right. Almost 50% of new phone sales are iPhones or Android Phones. With all that eyeshare being spent on only 2 phone platforms, expect mobile marketing to land on your doorstep soon. And if you want my advice, I’d say it’s a good idea to be ready.