I did a little Q&A with Dan Butcher from Mobile Marketer for his piece on “Can Google Make Money from Mobile?”

Here’s the full transcript…

What is your take on Google’s mobile strategy, and how it fits into its overall plans for generating revenue?

Mobile is a huge opportunity for Google. Eric Schmidt has said over and over that the mobile advertising market will be bigger than the “fixed” web. That’s why Android is getting so much attention. And that’s why Google threw down $750 million for AdMob.

In my book, chapter 5 talks about being where your audience is. Google’s audience is anyone using the Internet. Every day, more and more people are accessing the Web from their mobile devices. Therefore, Google needs to be there.

Android allows Google to control the user-experience and make sure search is front and center so it can make money off search ads. And AdMob allows Google to cash in on ads via mobile sites and apps.

Given that Android is open source, how does having a mobile operating system benefit the company’s bottom line?

The bottom line revenue impact for Android is primarily through search ads. By having direct access to mobile users, Google can make sure search is always baked into the experience. And if Apple were to lock out AdMob or change the search default to Bing on the iPhone OS, Google wouldn’t be totally screwed.

At some point, every business will have a mobile app, the way every business today has a website. If Google can get the millions of mom and pop advertisers that buy search ads on the fixed web to buy ads on the mobile web, the long tail revenue will be huge. The first step towards that is helping these businesses create mobile assets. Open-source is key and Google App Inventor is a great example of how to convert the mom and pops.

Will Google be as successful monetizing mobile search as it has been monetizing search via PCs?

Yes. The key to PC-search for Google is having a large enough pool of advertisers that it can show a relevant ad (or 10) for every possible query. That makes it a good user-experience. If the ads aren’t relevant, people won’t click.

Beyond just mobile web search though, there are opportunities for Google to put relevant ads in SMS, Voice, and Image search. These formats really take advantage of the unique features of mobile.

What companies do you see as Google’s main competitors in the mobile space, and what are Google’s prospects for success going forward?

Apple is the one I’d be most concerned about if I were Google. Sure Microsoft is a player and the Bing mobile search app is nice. But, just like with the fixed web, Bing’s still playing catch-up and copycat.

Apple on the other hand is taking a totally different approach. Now I’m not in love with iAd but I do think that format has legs for brand advertisers. What I am in love with is Siri, the “virtual personal assistant” that Apple bought back in April.

In chapter 21 of my book I talk about the potential for app-ssistants like Siri to supplant search. Rather than do a bunch of search queries to plan a trip or a date night, you can just send one instruction to your app-ssistant and get back a personalized itinerary based on your preferences.

If I’m Google, the idea that someone might skip me completely in the process of performing this kind of commercial transaction would definitely be keeping me up at night. That said, I have no doubt Google will find a play in the world of app-ssistants and I explore a few different paths it may take in my book.

Happy (and appreciative) to have made reading lists in these 2 publications:

Globe and Mail – The future is here: how your organization can get a grip on it

MediaPost – Online Marketing Summer Reading With A Glass Of Wine

Through some investigative reporting, Laurie Sullivan of MediaPost, uncovered a few flaws in the new Facebook Places feature — namely, the ability to check-in from as far as 800 meters away from a location as well as check other people in with you.

When Laurie asked me for my perspective,  I said I applauded Facebook for launching Places before it had all the kinks worked out. In my column, “Everything I Need to Know About Product Development I Learned From Google,” I share the Googley Lesson, “It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect.”

Indeed, Facebook had to launch a location-based check-in feature asap to combat the growth of Foursquare. With Twitter, Facebook waited too long to change its status update call-to-action, “What are you doing?” to “What’s on your mind.” In the process, Twitter reached significant and sustainable scale.

Facebook won’t make that mistake again and, to be sure, the flaws with Places are relatively minor and (will be) easily corrected.

Here’s Laurie’s full report with my POV baked in: “ What Will Vicarious Facebook Check-Ins Get Advertisers?”

Image Source: Cyber-Cinema.com

I shared the back-story of how I landed my book deal with Laurie Sullivan for her column in ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors), “Crowdsourcing Social Media Becomes Ticket to Publishing Contract.”

Here’s the quick and dirty of how it all went down:

1. Got inspired to pen a Tweet-o-biography — essentially chronicling my life to date, one tweet at a time
2. Set up a Twitter account @tweetobiography and bought the domain Tweetobiography.com to explain the project and stream the tweets
3. Began tweeting.
4. Presented at ad:tech webinar and digital expo and met marketing rep from McGraw Hill Professional at my “booth”
5. Asked MHP rep if she could get me in touch with an editor to pitch my project
6. Got connected with editor and pitched Tweetobiography
7. Politely told by editor that MHP published business books and Tweetobiography would not be a good fit
8. Got buy-in to come back to editor when I had a more business-friendly book idea
9. Came up with concept for “Everything I Need to Know About Marketing I Learned From Google”
10. Published 10 “lessons” in MediaPost Search Insider column
11. Blogged, tweeted, begged and pleaded for people to click “Like it” on MediaPost column — generated over 150 responses
12. Set up Twitter account @LearnFromGoogle and bought the domain LearnFromGoogle.com to explain the project and stream the tweets (many of which I included in the book to break up the long-form copy and encourage dialogue pre/post publishing). Note: now I’m using @GoogleyLessons and GoogleyLessons.com.
13. Circled back with MHP editor who liked idea and asked me to create formal proposal
14. Published 2 follow-up columns in MediaPost bringing the list of lessons to 20 total
15. Submitted proposal and received offer
16. Put Tweetobiography on hold

Here’s my advice for writers looking to get a deal of their own:

On Thursday, Google announced it would acquire ITA, a travel software firm, and immediately launched the requisite website pro-actively lobbying to get the deal approved by regulators.

I shared the following POV on the implications of the Google ITA acquisition with Laurie Sullivan of MediaPost for her article, “Google Buys ITA Travel Software Co. For $700 Million Cash, Dings Bing.”

Let’s start with advantages to users, which is always how Google thinks about things. The future of search utility is not in links but in actions. In my book [Chapter 21: Future Proofing, to be exact] I talk about how the future is search-and-act engines or “app-ssistants” like Siri (which Apple bought) that allow you to give instructions rather than submit queries and deliver actions not just links. So for example, if you’re planning a trip you can just tell your app-ssistant, “Chicago to New York for pleasure” and it will fetch you an itinerary with airlines, hotel, car rental, dinner reservations, theater tickets, etc. all based on your saved preferences. In this example, a product like ITA is critical to gathering and organizing much of the data needed to complete the action.

For advertisers, the advantages are a little less obvious. Long-term, search-and-act engines will provide tremendous opportunities to brands that have digitized and distributed their assets [as outlined in Chapter 17: Show Off Your Assets] so app-ssistants can find them and include them in the actions they deliver. Short-term, ITA likely means more traffic to Google and, importantly, more commercial queries that advertisers love because they represent someone ready to buy, read: strong ROI. [More on this in Chapter 4: Mindset Matters.]

For Google, more commercial queries mean more ad revenue. Also, Bing has been playing up its strengths in travel with Farecast integration. This deal should give Google the decided edge and help it retain share.

Image Source: Channel Fever.net