Mobile Innovation

While Google purposely pursues a much wider agenda that goes to the heart of mobile advertising, (in all the excitement many missed the news that Google has launched coupons linked to Google Maps - a move that dovetails well with location-based mobile advertising somewhere down the road), its efforts are scattered in comparison to those of rival Yahoo In fact, a closer examination of Yahoo’s recent raft of mobile services and search deals, shows Yahoo is not only more focussed than Google, but potentially much better positioned.

Unlike Google, Yahoo has soothed operator fears that branded search must result in brand dilution and a raw deal. Indeed, Yahoo has become expert at selling itself as the missing link in operator’s emerging fixed-mobile content access and search strategies. It is also an indispensable part of their search monetization schemes.

This was the message that came through loud and clear in a discussion I had with Mark Joseph, Head of Content at 3. The UK operator recently sealed a world-first global agreement to provide Yahoo services and search. The milestone move sees Yahoo taking the top-notch position as the default Internet search engine on 3 handsets and on Planet 3, the operator’s mobile portal. According to Joseph, the tie-up with Yahoo is core to 3’s strategy to “bring trusted Internet brands to our network in a way that enhances [users’] overall customer experience”. Search monetization is also high on 3’s agenda - especially since Yahoo will abide by 3’s business rules to also deliver a mix of on-portal content offers promoting 3’s own content partners and the wider Web in search results (which Yahoo will also transcode for delivery to mobile devices). Geraldine Wilson, Yahoo’s VP of Connected Life at Yahoo Europe, tells me the plan is to present “3 content followed by paid-for placements, sponsored links and then the Wider Web”.

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Google announced today that they’re extending their reach into the location-based marketing business, with the launch of a couponing product. Local businesses can offer coupons against their products and services via Google Maps and users simply print them and then then redeem them as usual.

But where’s the mobile element? Google Maps already offer the facility to send driving directions to your phone, so why not get the coupons sent there too? You could simply show the phone at the point of sale and that’s it.

Many of the problems associated with redemption of phone-based coupons aren’t applicable in this instance. If the target market is expected to be owner-run businesses, staff education about the redemption process ceases to become an issue - whereas for someone like Walmart to introduce mobile coupons, the physical redemption process becomes a huge hurdle to overcome. In any event, the option to make the coupon mobile could be given to the merchant on sign up, so they can decide if its something they can cope with.

In addition, malredemption of coupons isn’t an issue here, as all these coupons are all self-liquidating offers, so the more redeemed, the better. This must be the case, as by partnering with Google Maps in the first place, the merchant has made an unlimited number of coupons available, in theory.

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