Apple & Facebook – A New Partnership?
We all heard of the big break up last year when Google CEO Eric Schmidt got booted from Apple’s board. With their emotionally break up Apple is wanting to become BFF’s (best friends forever) with the popular social network, Facebook. Facebook and iTunes are looking to partner up. With iTunes’ having 125 million credit card accounts and Facebooks’ social graph, they’re sure to be a power house team. It was obvious on April 3, 2010 when Apple tycoons ripped open their new iPad and saw no such thing as a Facebook application that their friendship is still in the making.
FTC Antitrust VS. Google
The Federal Trade Commission is trying to start up an antitrust challenge with Googles’ proposed purchase of the mobile-advertising company AdMob. Google has offered AdMob $750 million, which would then make Google the lead supplier of ads that run on mobile devices. The FTC has asked AdMob’s competitors to testify about the possible impact this purchase might have on the industry. If Google purchases AdMob, people are worried about the domination it might have.
iAd Announced
After Google made the proposal to purchase AdMob, Apple has announced their mobile advertising platform, with the creative name iAd! This will allow Apple to sell and host ads, giving 60% of ad revenue back to developers. Apple has stated that the developers can add ads to their apps in just an afternoon. Another unique aspects of the iAd is that unlike other mobile ads that kick users outside of the application they’re using, iAd has the users stay at the same app.
Mobile Targeting Options Specifically For The iPad
Google has been working hard to make sure that their advertising products work well on different classes of exciting new devices – mobile phones with full Internet browsers, such as the iPhone and others running on the Android operating system. With these high end phones making up 50% of mobile search queries, it’s highly valuable for advertisers to connect with these users.
The iPad specifically is more similar to a mobile device than to a desktop or laptop computer. It runs on a mobile operating system, has a touch screen, run mobile apps, and is highly portable, suited for on-the-go browsing.
Because of these reasons, Google has now decided to include the iPad as a mobile device target in AdWords. This allows AdWords advertisers to easily extend the reach of their current ad campaigns to these new types of devices.
Emergency Google Search Results
In the case of an emergency, time is of the essence, so Google is now trying to make search results more relevant. For example, Google has altered the search results when someone searches for something involving “suicide.” Now, before any ads appear, Google returns the telephone number for National Suicide Prevention above any other search results.
YouTube Redesign
YouTube users are not happy with the latest changes that have been made to their interface. YouTube is now doing a number of redesigns of the redesigns. Some areas that users have asked for recently were: a better separation of comments, different fonts, and a functional pop-out player.
Google Testing Voice App For Desktop
The new “I have to have it” application is Google Voice. Google is dedicated to giving their fans what they want by testing the desktop-based version of the service at their headquarters. This development is the likely result of Google’s purchase of Gizmo5 last year.
Dana Redfield
Paid Search Staff
Sources:
Gigom – Why Facebook & Apple Will Team Up Against Google
WSJ – Regulator Concerned By Google Ad Deal
Google Inside AdWords – Go Mobile! Series: Your ads on the iPad
