M-Commerce

As business offerings go, Go800's plan is simple: It gives mobile consumers a quick keyword connection to a call-back from vendors. The vendor's ad lists an easy-to-remember keyword, a ready-to-buy viewer texts that keyword to Go800, and a moment later the viewer's phone rings with a call from the v...

Egged on by the chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, the Federal Trade Commission may be considering an effort to block Google's $750 million purchase of mobile advertising firm AdMob. The FTC reportedly is assembling a team of attorneys to h...

Google has introduced a mobile version of its Product Search tool that lets users check on a product's availability in local participating stores. Product Search for mobile with local inventory lets a user see if, say, a Nikon Coolpix camera is in stock at a nearby Best Buy or Sears -- two of the re...

There are currently more than 270 million cellphone users in the U.S., and 82 percent of them never leave home without their devices, according to a recent study. With that many people walking around with mobile phones, it is time to get smart about mobile marketing efforts and engage customers via ...

Search marketing will undergo many changes in 2010, according to marketing agency Greenlight. Among other things, Facebook will have to offer better ad tracking, mobile search will take off, and Google will rethink incorporating Twitter search data into its real-time search results as well as includ...

As the number, power and flexibility of mobile devices has increased, so has their use for shopping. In 2008, a Nielsen survey found that 9 million people in the United States "have used their mobile phone to pay for goods or services," and many more expect to do so soon. In a 2009 survey by Deloitt...

Apple is acquiring mobile ad company Quattro Wireless for an undisclosed amount, Andy Miller, Quattro's vice president, mobile advertising, said in a statement on the company's Web site. Apple, of course, has a rich array of products, including the iPhone and iPod touch lines. What it doesn't have i...

Google's plan to acquire mobile ad network AdMob in a $750 million deal announced last month is under fire from two consumer groups, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy. The two have asked the Federal Trade Commission to block the deal, arguing that it would substantially lessen c...

2009 is expected to be the first year when mobile phones start gaining real traction in holiday shopping. Nearly one in five consumers will use a mobile device to assist in their holiday shopping this year, according to Deloitte's most recent Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends Shop...

Ten years after national commercial platforms for mobile commerce were launched in the Philippines and Japan, the United States is slowly beginning to creep into the field. Residents in rural parts of the Philippines and other developing nations routinely pay bills through their smartphones, while p...

Forecasts for the magnitude of online micro-payments can whet the appetite of any profit-minded businessperson. However, cracking that code is more complicated than one thinks. There is little question as to whether sub-US$5 products can be sold in mass volume, but the lynchpin to opening the floodg...

Google has developed a new JavaScript snippet for AdSense aimed at high-end mobile phones, giving advertisers yet another option for using its mobile platform. The new feature allows publishers to run larger-scale text and image ads on smartphones. As more people use these devices, more advertisers ...

In the U.S., consumers are accustomed to paying for merchandise with checks, credit cards and debit cards. Online shopping and banking transactions are dependent on electronic money transfers between vendors and their customers' financial institutions. That experience, however, is not universal. Con...

The proliferation of smartphones, alongside the growth in number of subscribers of 3G network data plans, is having a ripple effect on multiple markets, from mobile apps to hardware enhancements. As media becomes increasingly fragmented, advertisers are focused on multiplatform media strategies in o...

Google has rolled out a mobile-friendly version of its Product Search feature for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Google Product Search is a search engine that works much as the name indicates: Users type in keywords relevant to what they're seeking -- "garnet rings," for instance -- and the fea...