A new mobile advertising service called tapMatch has just been launched by mobile ad solutions provider, Jumptap. tapMatch offers pay per click mobile advertising.
tapMatch
Companies can now advertise their products on this service by bidding on keywords and categories. The ads will then be displayed on mobile web pages and above mobile search results.
Jumptap claim that the service uses technology to relay ads very selectively, so that advertisers do not waste their money.
The service allows advertisers to target ads to certain handset models such as the Blackberry and iPhone. Google AdWords mobile ads do not currently provide device targeting. Like Google, other targeting options such as location, mobile carrier and language are also be available on tapMatch.
In the past pay per click mobile ad services have not been able to target audiences too well, in spite of the personal nature of the medium. TapMatch will allow advertisers to select their target audience by building client profiles through various sources such as search queries, context and previous click-through history of the client. Accordingly only appropriate and relevant ads will be shown to the mobile user.
Additional levels of audience demographic targeting present in the ad delivery system are expected to produce high levels of user engagement, which should eventually translate to high a conversion rate for advertisers.
Signing up for tapMatch is easy. Advertisers who are used to Google AdWords will find the process of signing up and setting up campaigns to be remarkably similar.
Pricing of these ads will be auctioned just as it is for Google AdWords. Advertisers will be required to pay only if the user carries out one of the click actions the service offers, which include:
- Sending users to a website
- Displaying an SMS landing page that includes a title, 250 character description, an image and instruction to text something to a short number
- Capturing an email address via a landing page that includes a title, 250 character description, an image and a text box with a button to capture user email addresses
- Showing a phone number on a landing page with a title, 250 character description and an image – this would have worked better as a pay per call action
- Delivering a 250 character marketing message along with a title and image.
In theory, all these features seem very interesting. However, reality might show that tapMatch has a long way to go before it provides serious competition to the likes of Google, mainly due to the higher volume of mobile users that default to the search giant even for their mobile search needs.
