Overture, the paid-search network, has announced several deals to take it into the hot space of mobile search. More deals and partnerships are expected soon.

Well, actually the announcement they’ve made is more an announcement that they’re going to make an announcement. They have signed up to provide paid-search for Yahoo’s WAP portal (well, since Yahoo! own Overture, it would have been a bigger story if they’d gone with someone else) and the off-portal search from a mobile operator (to be announced). This is in addition to a deal already signed with Orange.

More deals and partnerships are expected soon.

Mobile search is an interesting area, for two reasons.

Firstly, 30% of searches are currently to look for mobile content (ringtones etc). Since about 2/3 of mobile content is currently sold via operator portals, this is a clear and present danger for operator revenues. In other words, while they may make money from the advertisers paying for their ads to be presented to users, many of these ads will be for competitors of the operators.

Since the cost of the ad itself is clearly going to be much less than the profit on the sale of the content (it has to be, otherwise there’s no business model), this has the clear potential to cannibalise operator content revenues.

Having said that, operators have little choice but to get involved. If they don’t offer search, someone else will. Though the prospect of an operator paying to advertise on its own search portal is an interesting one. The danger is that if the operator does pay to get high results every time, other advertisers are very likely to boycott the service.

Hmmmm.

The other fascinating element of this emerging market is that no one is talking about local mobile search. While this isn’t the only market for mobile search, by any means, it will be an important one.

My opinion is that search on mobiles will polarise into two distinct and sizable markets - maybe even dominated by different types of companies.

The first area is Location-Independent Search (LIS), which is very similar to the type of search you do on your desk top. After all, if you’re looking for ringtones to download to your phone, the location of the retailer is of little importance. Distance is dead and all that.

But if you want the name of a shop or restaurant, as an example, location is probably a very important factor indeed. Thus, you’ll want to undertake a LDS (Location Dependent Search). The default location will be where you’re standing right now, but you’ll be able to over-ride this by inputting another location, if you wish.

So the LIS sector could well end up being dominated by Overture or a company like that - I can’t see Google standing by and letting them win though. And the LDS sector should be the heartland for Yellow Pages or other locally organised directory service.

It’s going to be a fascinating space to watch it emerge.

Story via NMA.