Mobile Applications for Smartphones

But wait, there's more! It doesn't stop with just mobile versions of popular, often visited Websites. It goes much further and will continue for many, many years until mobile-centric computing has become the center of the information universe.

If you doubt this conclusion, just take a look at what's happening with mobile applications. They have gone from zero to hundreds of thousands in just a couple of years-and will be in the millions before too long. Why are so many mobile applications getting created? The answer is very simple: mobile applications provide a better experience to the user than what you get with a Web browser. Application developers are able to manage the screen and processing better. It looks and feels better.

As a result of providing a better user experience, more users are spending more time working with mobile applications on their smartphone than with the mobile Web. From an advertising perspective, that means that the mobile Web isn't getting as many of the total eyeballs viewing mobile screens.

Instead, mobile users are viewing mobile application screens-and it turns out that there is another new world of "in-mobile-application" advertising that's headlined by Apple with iAd. Now, developers can include ads within an iPhone or iPad application and get paid part of the advertising fees that comes from the iAd network. These ads are embedded. If the user clicks on them, they go to the ad message, but when the user is done with the ad, iOS and iAd take the user back to the application. This is something that does not happen on the Web or mobile Web.

In mobile, new ad networks are getting created. New ways of monetizing the user experience are being created. It won't be long before most users will be spending most of the time viewing mobile applications, and that revenue from in-application mobile advertising will exceed the revenue generated from the mobile Web.