Google has just wrapped up a successful test for advertising via mobile phones in Japan, according to Bloomberg. The Japanese mobile phone market, more robust and advanced than the US market, is often used to test mobile technologies.
It is also potentially an indicator of things to come, though Google says testing a similar service in the US is a ways off. Verizon and Adobe just announced a collaborative effort to incorporate Flash-based services in upcoming devices, a capability long available in Japan.
“Mobile Internet usage is fairly high in Japan,” Deep Nishar, a Google product manager, told Bloomberg. “We’ve had a fairly successful trial of mobile text ads there.”
A potentially lucrative revenue stream for Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search advertising giant has launched a barrage of wireless services in the recent past; these services range from Internet search to maps.
According to Nishar, advertisers may be willing to pay more for mobile phone advertising than for PC-based ads because mobile phone users may be closer to point of sales or point of purchase.
The forthcoming mobile advertising era should work well in conjunction with Toshiba’s recently announced technology that allows mobile phones to scan product bar codes and return an overall product rating from the comments in the blogosphere.
The technology can search for up to 100 product reviews on weblogs and calculate an overall positive or negative mood within about 10 seconds. Testing for the product also began in Japan last month, and is expected to be available in mobile phones before April 2007.
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