In my mobile search advertising column for MobiAdNews, I encouraged publishers to explore their options. As I see it: “What used to be a choice between branded search providers (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) is now a choice between branded search providers and a wide range of white-label and vertical search alternatives. The potential for paid for search is massive, and the market is wide open.”

It was beyond the scope of the column to list all the white-label offers (such as JumpTap, for example), let alone elaborate on all the exciting vertical search monetization schemes on the horizon.

When I wrote “vertical” in my conclusion, I was thinking specifically of Abphone, an entertainment content search engine I’ve tracked since the start that has chalked up some impressive deals over the last months to expand its ad network and spread awareness of its service.

Today, the news is Abphone’s deal with ZestADZ, the largest mobile ad network in India.

ZestADZ is a mobile ad marketplace that enables the delivery of highly targeted, location sensitive, contextually relevant mobile advertisements. What’s more, ZestADZ messaging on the website maintains the company is sharply focused on enabling publishers to launch ad-funded mobile sites, applications and services. Entertainment mobile search is no doubt the missing piece to make this content indexable, findable and – hence – monetizable. (I have an email request out to ZestADZ CEO Terry Uppal to learn more, so watch this space.)

By way of background India adds almost 9 million new subscribers every month, and the Telecom Regulatory Authority there reports India had a total of 278 million mobile users as of May. According to abphone, India represents the fifth major market for the company after South Africa, the U.S., the UK and France.

Against this backdrop, Abphone has “decided to strategically invest in India to become the most popular search destination for entertainment and multimedia in India, and intends to sign deals with Indian carriers.” I checked with the company and was told that a deal with a U.S. ad network is also in the works. (abphone has publicly announced contracts with Ad Infuse and 4th Screen.)

The deal with ZestADZ and the traction abphone is getting (Abphone recently passed 500 million searches and reports “over a hundred million pages seen every month”) are a testament to the increasing popularity of vertical mobile search.

But don’t just take my word for it.

A read between the lines in this post on AdMob’s expansion into South Africa reveals Abphone is already among the most popular sites there.

From the post: “The most popular sites visited by SA users include Peperonity (http://peperonity.com [community]), Mocospace (http://mocospace.com [Community], http://Songlyrics.twilightwap.com and http://jokes.twilightwap.com (Entertainment) and ABPhone (www.abphone.com [Search]). Nokia handsets created 36.1% of traffic, followed by Samsung with 31.3% and Motorola with 14.6%. The top handsets from SA users are the Samsung E250, the Motorola V360 and the Nokia N70.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Research, Mobile Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.