Dave’s Take

The latest twist in the battle of mobile search engine evolution is the ability to apply local targeting. This technology permits smart phone apps to not only recommend a great restaurant (or whatever else you are looking for) located in your present area, but to deliver ads or reviews for that venue instantly. Already in the game are Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla, along with the goliath of the industry, Google. Its new Near Me Now and Latitude are cutting edge and promise to grab more market share than all the others combined.

Before Google counts its chickens however, it might want to check out what the little guys are launching to compete. Recently, two daring whippersnappers have teamed up to shake up the mobile search biz and industry insiders think they may be on to something. Loopt, the social networking service that allows users to locate any of their friends’ locations instantaneously via detailed mapping; and Mobile Spinach, the Northern California-based mobile coupon distributor are changing the local targeting landscape by offering the first phone apps allowing for local businesses to offer instant coupons and promotions to mobile surfers.

Scheduled to roll out first in San Francisco, their new service will give local merchants the ability to immediately interact with people who are 100% demographically guaranteed to be interested in their product or service. Imagine being able to not only locate reviewed recommendations of a requested product or supplier, but to receive a mobile coupon good for that business immediately. If any local entrepreneurs needed another reason to cancel their Yellow Pages ad or their Sunday circular coupon budget, this is it.

Well almost. The one fly in the ointment is Apple. Last week, the makers of the Macintosh sent notice to mobile app designers everywhere, warning that future applications with local targeting abilities will not be allowed for the iPhone or iPad. This not only hurts firms like Loopt immediately, but with over 25% of the smart phone market, they can control the entire landscape of the market. Design engineers are wondering what the “think different” people are planning to release on their own. Once again, Steve Jobs has the world awaiting his whim.

Regardless of what Apple does, local targeting is here to stay. Soon, every consumer GPS system and smart phone will incorporate this new technology in one way or another. The only question remaining is whether Apple will play well with others or stay in their own sandbox.

Since the inception of the Internet, pop-up ads have been the bane of surfers. Reacting to their customer demands, most IPs instituted apps that precluded pop-ups from ever loading on most computers. Problem solved? Not quite. As anyone who uses the web on regular basis knows, a new form of pop-up has slowly infiltrated the net, especially on video-laden sites. What is this new source of viewer frustration? The dreaded invention known as the pre-roll video ad.

The video pre-roll ad is the latest effort to monetize the deluge of short video clips loaded millions of times daily from people around the globe. As anyone who has watched the cute piano playing cat or the evolution of dance guy knows, the pre-roll ad is mandatory and annoying. How annoying do viewers find these intrusions? According to a new study by the online analytics firm, TubeMogul, almost 16% of video viewers will abandon a site rather than sit through a thirty-second video ad. Even the shorter fifteen-second ads are turned off by almost 10% of potential viewers. Clearly, consumers do not see the value of wasting even a half a minute for the chance to see the latest darling video on the web.

Personally, I not only resent the fact that I am forced to watch a commercial for a product I may or may not ever use, but I really hate pre-rolls because the majority of them are technically unwatchable. I cannot count the number of times I have waited for a pre-roll spot to load, only to discover the final version jerky and loaded with audio that never syncs. Is this the best that top advertisers and their agencies can produce? It’s like the TV networks deciding that to increase viewership, they are going back to broadcasting in black and white.

I especially resent mandatory pre-rolls on news and magazine sites, where I have been forced to turn to other sources for information ruined by pre-rolls. Apparently, I am not alone in this belief, as the TubeMogul study discovered a full 25% of news and magazine viewers will not suffer through an imbedded spot. Apparently the beleaguered mag biz will need to keep trying other revenue streams to continue operations.