With the recent news of Google’s acquisition of AbMob for $750M, there has been real debate over what is to come of the mobile Internet and apps.  I found this acquisition interesting as one of the key strengths and strategies of AdMob has been in facilitating the iPhone in-app ad market. Although there are many providers such as SMAATO, Greystrip, etc…,  AdMob’s strength was with their self-serve engine and global footprint that enabled them to scale quite eloquently with the iPhone as well.  Many claim they were the mobile ad experts of  the long-tail publishers,  but iPhone was not a long-tail product with many extremely creative premium brand engagement solutions as apps leveraging AdMob.  With up to 60% of the apps free,  the facilities of AdMob and the others have been the key driver of this business model for developers focusing on the rich app experience.  Now with this acquisition, Google has its own foot hold in the marketplace of iPhone advertising even as it embarks on its own independent  journey with Android, with the monetization of both in-app and web a balanced growth and combined cross-media strategy.   As we have heard in the press,  Google positioned Android as the Internet machine,  the ability to add free navigation and scale with the largest advertising community on the web today inclusive of mobile puts them in a very solid lead position.

Apple does not have its own advertising platform for mobile to facilitate the free, but has been doing quite well without it.  Will Apple need its own advertising solutions to potentially offer as part of the free solution?  If I were a mobile ad exchange,  I would be talking to Apple about how to integrate the solution into the App Store process with the best yield management to give developers with their free offering the best revenue streams through federating in even Google and Admob. Was this not a problem that AdMob had not to long ago? At the end of the day as Apple is managing the platform, they are in a position to give developers the best revenue streams through yeild management and discovery.  This is what Facebook has done.  Enable their own advertising platform for their marketplace.  I think this trend will continue with platform providers all having their own solution for ad-serving and federating in ad networks and ad-tags.  I think who ever has an app store will now need an advertising exchange platform for support the delivery of free apps.   Not only that, having this facility will also enable some of the best opportunities for data optimization and relevancy targeting.  How will this now sit with AT&T that Google has better analytics of what is happening in the free community of iPhone?   Apple made the decision to drop Google maps and to bring in their own unique map platform?   Will Apple keep to the D2C only strategy and not get into these services further? As iPhone now grows,  so does Google with the acquisition of AdMob, giving them the data insights and strategies to see what is hot and what is not through the analytics of free in the iPhone Marketplace. We may someday forget the very powerful great reports that AdMob delivered to us about the state of the mobile industry via their network, as this will potentially go “dark” as Google has not been so forthcoming with that type of industry analytics for free. Yes- we get products and services for free, but the “secret behind-the-scenes analytical intelligence” is something worth its weight in gold and now a key asset they have to expand further.

iPhone is leading the pack when it comes to velocity, but Android is making its mark… with this we are bound to see Apple needing to expand to the other carriers in North America and also potentially open up a bit.  I would love to see stronger alliances with iPhone between the likes of RIM, Motorola, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, HTC but those bridges seemed to be burned long ago? or not?

We are still in the early days of penetration of smart-phones and the overall potential of mobile access of the Internet in my opinion.   There are 150M Websites out there that are getting hit everyday even with mobile devices.  Many of them are iPhones that set the marketplace here in North America for full HTML browsing.  What is 100K apps compared to 150M websites? less then 0.1% of the size and potential of the Internet and with all devices in the future accessing the web, we are bound to see millions of widgets and mobile-versions of websites.

So when we say Apples to Apples comparison with iPhone,  I really feel we are talking about Apples to Gorillas unless Apple does make some major moves with strategic alliances and acquisitions.  I was once told, ” There is always somebody out there smarter and stronger then yourself in many ways, so leverage the community”.  Apple going at it on its own will now be a challenge with the Open Android approach that is sucking in so many of the hardware companies.  With Google now behind Motorola ( the giant that has been dormant for the last couple of years) and many others, it was fine for Apple to become great friends of the consumer, but they need more friends in this overall marketplace….. So lets hope and see if Apple will become the Gorilla in the room in the years to come.