Google is one of those companies that puts out one hit for every x number of misses. Today, they announced that they’re shutting down AdWords Business Pages for mobile. In their words, the product (launched just 14 months ago) had “low usage.” In other, uh, Ad words, they couldn’t lure in businesses to make simple web pages for mobile.
Director of mobile search specialist agency Accuracast Farhad Divecha told The Washington Post that one of the big problems was that the service was generally aimed at usually much smaller businesses that typically managed AdWords themselves were unaware that the service even existed, or were happy to have their ads click through to a number that consumers could reach them on.
What does this mean for Google’s overall mobile strategy? Divecha tells the Post that while mobile ad spend is getting better, the audience volumes to justify mobile spend are not there just yet – at least in the way of helping small businesses make mobile pages.
Google isn’t ignoring mobile, of course. It’s just sticking to what it does best – search. Earlier this month the search giant opened up its beta AdSense for Search, which allows mobile publishers to embed a Google search box on their mobile site, just like they would for traditional websites. Its mobile focus is now targeted at Android and mobile apps. On Monday, Google Mobile was launched on Windows Mobile phones. So Google is surely not abandoning mobile marketing efforts, just doing some wise restructuring.