Could the next generation of Mobile Internet browsers adversely affect the market for Mobile Advertising?

Posted by Jamie Moss Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

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On May 15th Mozilla announced the availability of the Alpha version of Fennec. Fennec is the mobile implementation of the Firefox desktop browser and is something that I have been looking forward to for some time. Prior to this announcement, the only publicly available build of the browser was designed for installation on Nokia’s Maemo-based tablets, which few people have access to. But this latest release (downloadable here) comes in the CABinet file format and should be installable on any Windows Mobile 6 powered handset; despite Mozilla’s caveat that the build is apparently only really intended for use on the HTC Touch Pro.

The version of Mobile Internet Explorer that came pre-loaded with my own Windows Mobile Smartphone has consistently delivered a less than satisfying browsing experience. The only alternatives I found were Opera Mobile, which you have to pay for after a trial period, and Opera Mini which is a great little free Java-based application, but which doesn’t give a fully-featured browser experience. Meanwhile I have been using Firefox on my PC for nearly two years, following the awful application stability that I experienced while running Internet Explorer 7. Initially I just wanted a browser that wouldn’t hang up on me each day, but I have since become a genuine fan of Firefox and have been keenly anticipating the launch of the mobile version.

One of my favourite things about Firefox is the Add-Ons. These are third party-developed plug-ins designed to add new, application-specific functionality to the browser. Users can browse the full catalogue of Mozilla accredited Add-Ons at addons.mozilla.org and like Firefox every one of them is free. If there is anything you’ve found yourself wishing that your browser could do while surfing the Internet, the chances are that someone else has considered the exact same issue and has built an Add-On to address the problem. Such is the level of maturity of the Firefox Add-Ons developer community. There are 17 different categories of Add-Ons and excitingly this image captured by CNET from Mozilla’s ‘Fennec for Windows Mobile’ demo video shows that Add-Ons will be a fully supported part of Fennec too.

The first Add-Ons that I used were for blocking intrusive content. Due to how annoying I found those ‘floating overlay’ type Flash adverts and how much it bugged me when websites featured slow-loading graphical advertising elements, ordered to appear first before the text that I actually wanted to read. As a consequence I currently use the Add-Ons ‘FlashBlock’ (controls which flash animations you want to download and play), ‘AdBlock Plus’ (blocks content from lists of known ad-servers) and ‘NoScript’ (prevents automated web page scripting elements from running without your permission). Apparently I’m not the only one wanting to do so either.

Mozilla report that FlashBlock currently receives 52,196 downloads each week and has been downloaded 6,594,378 times in total. While AdBlock Plus is reported as having 684,386 downloads a week, with a whopping 50,381,792 downloads overall. I hope you can see where I’m going with this… If Fennec becomes widely available as a user-installable browser for Windows Mobile (and potentially Android?) based phones, then Mobile Internet users will have the ability to remove all advertising material from the content they view. Blocking known ad servers and selectively disabling unwanted media formats.

The mobile advertising market is modest in size and while the strength of the mobile channel is solid in theory, brand conviction in backing it remains largely unproven. Similarly, with the Mobile Internet still being in it’s formative stages - despite the significant amount of revenue now being generated from wireless data tariff subscriptions - end user tolerance of advertising, which has been relatively absent from mobile phones to date, remains unqualified. After all, a mobile phone is a far more personal device than a desktop PC, so it might not be a surprise if advertisements are not well received. They could well be seen as a barrier to the immediacy and convenience that the mobility of a phone provides - and where a premium is being paid to access the Internet too.

Windows Mobile and Android-based smartphones seem likely to become the devices of choice for a significant portion of those wireless subscribers who want to browse the Internet using their mobile phone. So if Fennec’s popularity on mobile devices comes to match that of its desktop forbear then is there a danger that an Add-On empowered user base could have a noticeably negative impact on the mobile advertising click-through rate? Furthermore, it appears that Google Chrome is soon to get its own official Add-Ons (‘unofficial’ ones already exist)… which would logically lead to the eventual availability of Add-Ons for Chrome’s mobile cousin, the Android Webkit Browser, as well.

*Edit - Latest Update*

On June 26th Fennec Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile became available.
As announced here by Mozilla, with more details here from Mozilla’s mobile team technical lead, Stuart Parmenter.