The Next Small Thing

When it's not busy doing everything it can to aggravate the newspaper industry, $11bn search giant Google is investing all its resources in the next small thing: the mobile phone. Like nearly every company online, it is trying to work out how to make money from mobile advertising.

Its latest blu print is really quite exciting. Because mobile phones are always used by one consumer, they offer the best chance of building a consumer profile. Google's aim is to write individual ads for individual consumers on an ad hoc basis. If a consumer was walking down Oxford St and had spent the day sending messages to their friends about buying a new TV, the ad would tell them about deals on TVs in local shops at that time; it would fit the consumer like a glove. As Dave Armstrong, product manager at Google puts it, "every phone gets an individual ad, built on the fly".

Yahoo! has a headstart in this area. Its Y!Go software for mobile phones is quite simply the best of its kind. The recent announcment that it has cut a deal to preload 100m handsets for Telefonica, one of the world's largest telecommunications company is good news for the company. The next online war is sure to be won on the mobile phone; any early inroads will help.

Of course, the privacy conspiracists will scream foul play, but - if they're handled carefully and not wrecked by spammers - consumers will love these kinds of promotions.