Yahoo! is inviting web publishers to submit their content to the oneSearch index of the Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory, as well as to sign up to display ads on mobile sites from the new Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network.
Yahoo! wants to build on content offered by its oneSearch service, which can currently be accessed by around 85 per cent of mobile phones in the US, and Yahoo! hopes to be able to reach a large proportion of that audience by striving to become an early leader in the mobile search world. Unlike the traditional PC world, where Google dominates, Yahoo! have taken an early lead in mobile search, and are currently ahead of Google in this field.
As mobile phone technology develops further, it is expected that more and more searches will shift from traditional PC to hand held devices, and the Blackberry and Apple iPhone - as well as the hazy prospect of a future Google phone - are paving the way for this move into "searching on the go".
Yahoo! said that it plans to offer Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services, which would place target advertisements in response to searches consumers perform on mobile web browsers, similar to its current PC search engine.
The Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network will be made up of a number of partner companies including the early leader in delivering TV to mobile phones - MobiTV, Norway's Opera, whose popular browser is featured on many phones in Asia and Europe, and the U.S. yellow pages service, Go2.
Marco Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo!'s Connected Life business unit, explains Yahoo!'s latest moves:
"We started with text search on mobile phones, then we had display ads, now we have video, and in-game advertising is next. For the first time, mobile publishers have access to a big mobile ad network."
The new services are aimed at advertisers, mobile network carriers and websites looking to attract traffic to their mobile phone sites. As Yahoo! establishes greater mobile search supremacy, we can only wonder how arch rival Google will respond in order to cut a larger slice of the mobile search pie.
