I thought I’d chime in to express how disappointing Google’s first foray into mobile advertising is, on a number of different levels. Frankly, it’s about as disappointing as finding out that the fabled GPhone turns out to be two tin cans and a bit of string - actually, it could also be argued that this would show about as much understanding of the mobile ecosystem as their AdWord announcement yesterday.

First, if you’re not from these parts, let me say that I work for AdMob, which is a competitor to Google. It would be silly to pretend that this doesn’t influence my opinion, but let’s balance that out by saying that I probably understand what I’m talking about more than most. You can also see Omar’s (AdMob’s founder) position here.

So what have they done? They announced that from now on, when an advertiser books an AdWords campaign, their ad will automatically appear on the mobile version of Google. So, if a user searches Google using their mobile phone, the sponsored search results will include ads that were intended to be run in a PC environment. Google won’t be charging for these for a limited time, but will start to bill for them on November 18th - unless advertisers opt out.

This is the first problem, it seems to me. This should never be an opt out feature and as Russell Beattie puts it is a “seriously arrogant move” in itself, or at best demonstrating very poor judgement.

The absolute minimum that an advertiser could expect is a free service for a limited time, which they could opt to continue when they start to be charged for it. Given the size of the advertiser base, it’s a sure bet that some people are going to misunderstand this and start getting charged for ads they don’t want or don’t know what context they’re being displayed in.

Russell also speculates that Google might not even differentiate the two different types of clicks in their reporting. I really hope that this isn’t the case as it simply won’t allow advertisers to judge the effectiveness of their campaigns. More important, if the mobile element of the advertising works as badly as I think it might, it’ll depress overall Click Through Rates, which is one of the key metrics that an advertiser uses. So let’s hope the arrogance stops short here.

OK, so far we’ve had a lapse of commercial judgement, rather than mobile illiteracy, so let’s go on and look at what this all means.

When someone clicks on one of the ads in the search results, they’ll be taken off to the landing page that the advertiser has designated. Don’t forget this landing page has been designed for a PC environment, not a mobile one and this lies at the very heart of the issue and will cause the fundamental problem for most advertisers.

Firstly, the PC and mobile environments are different, although can appear similar to the inexperienced or naive - they’re like close cousins, rather than clones. I wrote last week about Orbitz’s great new mobile site and how they’d done a great job about thinking how the two were different. People want different things from the two types of sites and when interaction is needed, the User Interface needs to be considered and adapted. And, obviously, a site designed for the PC looks very different in a mobile context.

So how does Google tackle this? They will transcode the landing page, so that it it fits on the mobile phone.

Personally, I think that transcoding at best is a “work around”. It assumes that the two webs are basically the same and all you need do is cram the big one into the small one and that’s the end of the problem. I believe that the two need to be thought about separately, albeit with a consistent strategy. But I stress that this is “at best” and the Google solution is far from this and their technology is just not fit for purpose. It takes a lowest common denominator approach, resulting in websites that are difficult to use, as opposed to just browse, chops up pages into multiple pages and adds headers and footers that aren’t meant to be there.

When a transcoding approach is appropriate, it must always involve the input of the original publisher and never be the result of a third party arbitrarily deciding how other people’s websites should look. I’ve written about this before here , which was probably my most commented-on post ever and proved hugely controversial at the time. It was an unacceptable solution then and it’s unacceptable now - and if you think this post is any way motivated by my day job, I wrote that one pre-AdMob.

But this all leads to the main problem with this - it’s just not going to work. If the landing pages were intended to be simple brochure-ware it might have been a workable solution - let’s give them the benefit of the doubt here. Yes, it’s wrong to change people’s content and no, they don’t do a great job of doing it. But the objective of the vast majority of AdWords campaigns is not simple traffic building, but a specific call-to-action that the user must complete when they get to the website being promoted. That usually involves filling out a form on the website or interacting in some way and the transcoding process will completely screw up that interaction in the majority of cases. Believe me, I’ve spend a lot of time playing with Google on my mobile and I haven’t been able to DO anything when I click on these ads. Try it yourself here and see what happens to a website when accessed via their mobile transponder. I can’t believe any publisher would like what it does to their carefully designed website.

So there you have it. Advertisers might get the clicks in this environment, but they’ll be completely useless clicks, leading to plummeting Cost per Acquisition results - the other key metric that an advertiser will measure. It’s going to be like running ads for “Free Ringtones” only for the landing page to be selling life insurance. Lots of clicks, lots of disappointed customers and a complete waste of time and budget for the advertiser.

Is this just sour grapes written by someone who has a lot to lose from a successful Google launch? Actually not at all. In fact, it’s completely the opposite. If Google had done a good job, there would be tens of thousands of advertisers converted to the effectiveness of mobile advertising. AdMob would certainly benefit in the short term from this as many of them would look to use other players and we have over 1.4 billion pages of our own that they could use to run campaigns. I believe that a great Google mobile launch would have carried AdMob on the rising tide.

Instead, many, many of Google’s advertisers will find their first experience of mobile advertising just doesn’t work. Albeit that it was run without their express permission and in some cases, their knowledge - not everyone reads every newsletter you send out! Worse, millions of users will click on ads that take them to landing pages that don’t work either, which will be a very poor user experience and won’t encourage them to respond in the future.

The only party who can possibly benefit from this is Google and it’s going to be at the direct cost of all their customers and to the inconvenience of all the legions of fans who love Google search. They must have been so blinded by the apparent commercial advantage of instantly converting their whole advertiser base to mobile that they’ve missed the big picture. After all, there’s simply no point in trialing a service that isn’t going to work; it’s like an ice cream manufacturer giving away free samples of their new shit-flavour ice cream.

Google are unfortunately famous for refusing to listen and respond to criticism, so I don’t think they’ll change their position on this. But maybe they’ll surprise us and someone powerful enough will admit that it’s the wrong approach and adapt their modus operandi. This will be a great thing for Google and a great thing for mobile advertising generally. Let’s hope that they’re big enough to see that they’re just plain wrong on this one.

Please leave a comment and have your say. Am I over-reacting or is this a valid concern?