The Atlantic is reporting that Google and Apple are emerging as top contenders in the fight to conquer the mobile advertising market. The article, Google and Apple Lead War for Mobile Advertising, reports that mobile ad expenditures worldwide increased 74% last year, rising to a total of $913.5 million. With more than a third of young adults getting their mobile ads on Apple products, it’s clear that Apple is trying to leverage its impressive iPhone for a greater share of the mobile ad market. Google, however, already has a head start if it wants to accompany with a new phone product.
The mobile ad rush is accelerating too. Google recently acquired a new patent for location-based advertising. According to Venture Beat,
“Location-enabled search and advertising has been a major priority for Google over the past year. Last week, it started letting users refine their search by location to see results published nearby. The company’s newly-launched Buzz service also has location feeds with content that often beats out what Twitter’s geotagged tweets have to offer.”
The location-based ad patent may prove to be a valuable weapon as Google goes head-to-head with Apple in the battle for the mobile ad market. Perhaps fearing a user privacy backlash, Apple has been slow to adopt location-based advertising. The company claims that “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”
Regardless, both companies have recently made their bids to acquire mobile ad networks. As we reported earlier, Google bought Admob for $750 million in November, while Apple bought Quattro Wireless in January.
