We’ve been spending a great deal of time here at AdMob thinking about what is coming next for mobile, and one of the clear trends we are seeing is that over the next year or two we will see an emergence of what we are calling the ‘middle web’.   The first reference I have found online to this term is a post by Kelly Goto over at gotomobile.

Essentially, the belief is that we will be seeing many more iPhone-like devices that are capable of browsing the full web in all of its glory (minus flash glory for now) with things like javascript, DHTML, and full ajax support.  However, rather than spending most of their time on the full website, users will begin flocking to mobile specific versions of these sites that can for the first time ever take full advantage of all the incredible technologies everyone takes for granted when building for the internet.   This has already happened with important services such as Digg, Facebook, Google and others who have all built iPhone specific interfaces, and the trend will only continue. Already we know that android and the next generation of Nokias will include a browser based on webkit similar to what the iPhone has now, and this should be the beginning of an avalanche of new devices in the next few years with similar capabilities.

What will this mean for mobile, and closer to home, mobile advertising? For mobile in general this will be tremendously positive.  All of the above noted iPhone specific sites were built with little time and energy (relative to any other mobile deployment) simply because such a large amount of the existing technology investment is directly portable.  Furthermore, in finally dealing with a standards compliant proper web browser there were no issues with porting to many scores of devices.  In general, as this trend continues, the richness and depth of mobile services will expand dramatically by making it possible for companies and individuals to build and extend their services with the tools and technoligies they already know.  One does begin to question how much will be done by native clients vs. web applications, considering the browser on these devices are so capable.

In terms of mobile advertising the picture is a bit murkier. The theory goes that if everyone can simply browse the “real web” and see “read ads” then there will simply be no need for specialized mobile advertising.  Our experience thusfar has been the opposite.  Despite the fact that the technology will port easily, the interface remains different, and the value an advertiser can get from a mobile user vs. a pc user is also very different.  As a simple example, someone browsing on a PC is much more likely to engage with a shopping cart and make a purchase, while someone on a phone is much more likely to actually call you (surprise).

We’ll see how it all plays out, but from our perspective the rise of the middle web is inevitable at this point; it will be very interesting to see what this means for mobile in general.