Yahoo Tackles Mobile's Know-How Barrier

Surfing the net on most phones tends to be a laborious business, but with the advent of smartphones, Yahoo sees an opportunity to work with carriers to get more mobile owners online. 

Carriers need to show people what new phones can do if they want users to spend on more than just voice and text messages, which is where Yahoo can help, explains the executive overseeing Yahoo’s mobile arm in Asia, Matthias Kunze. The company has conducted in-store promotions with Hong Kong network CSL for example, showing customers how to use Yahoo’s mobile search tool OneSearch.

“When we do focused interviews with customers they usually say it’s too difficult to use, which of course will go away with more and more smartphones,” Kunze says. “We also tell carriers they should invest more in consumer education. We help carriers with this.”

Advertising potential ripens
Four years since after the launch of its dedicated mobile arm, Connected Life, Kunze believes Yahoo’s mobile services already have the scale to court advertisers in Asia. “We now have quite a strong user base, with millions of impressions every month. We believe mobile advertising has become a sustainable business now, and brands are interested in using our platform to reach out to mobile consumers.”

Sales efforts will initially focus on businesses related to the mobile world, such as mobile consumables companies and handset vendors. Travel advertising is also showing promise Kunze adds, as people on the go are more likely to be interested in traveling somewhere.

Location-based ads on hold
Mobile coupons could become popular in the short to medium term, with advertisers offering coupons via SMS, MMS or a bookmarked mobile site, though Kunze doesn’t bear much hope for location-based advertising, mooted as a major selling point for mobile, anytime soon.

“There is a lot of talk about location-based advertising, but there are still some technical challenges involved. With GPS-enabled handsets, we’ll be able to leverage on this, but now we rely on cell-tower information from the carrier.”

Mobile search meanwhile is starting to take off, though advertisers tend to mimic search strategies they’ve developed for the PC. “You would probably not see the same searches on the mobile as on the web,” Kunze says. “But for advertisers, they’re buying the same keywords.”