Motionbridge, which provides a mobile search engine for O2, T-Mobile and Orange handling several million queries per month, has decided to launch a sponsored link program. So far so froody, it’s a great way for search engines to make money… as long as the sponsored links are obvious as such. I haven’t seen any examples, so I don’t know how the sponsored links will be displayed, but this line from the website doesn’t inspire confidence: “Increase user satisfaction through a richer portal (really targeted ad is not perceived as advertisement, but as information)”. In a lot of ways that’s true – if I type “roses buy” into a search engine sponsored links are a good way of finding a good florist. But I really want to know if a link is sponsored… and in the online world apparently almost two thirds of search engine users fail to distinguish between paid and unpaid listings. If the sponsored links are obvious as such this is a great development for mobile content, giving carriers a source of income independent from their users.
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