T-Mobile G1 Large-Scale Advertising Campaign Brings Money to AOL

When Google and T-Mobile first announced the first Google Android-powered phone, T-Mobile G1, back in September, T-Mobile promised we would see a huge promotional campaign for the innovative gadget. So it is quite understandable that the blogosphere was a little disappointed when we did not see T-Mobile G1 pushed at us everywhere and the launch date was much quieter than expected, especially compared to the launch date of iPhone with long lines of people waiting for Apple stores to open.

So finally we see that promised big campaign in action with AOL benefiting from it to our surprise. The thing is that T-Mobile has chosen AOL’s advertising network Platform A to initiate a large-scale online advertising campaign for the phone. T-Mobile has purchased a whole billion of impressions to be served during only 2 days - today and tomorrow - on Platform A publishers’ websites, including AOL’s own sites like AOL Music and AOL TV.

The estimated amount of the deal is $1.5 million (calculated at the rate of $1.5 CPM) but even if the CPM rate is a little lower, it is still a huge deal for AOL’s struggling advertising business. And while two days may sound like a period too short to be significant, the number of impressions and the fact that Platform A reaches 90% of US online population will make sure that the penetration is really deep and almost everyone will see the ad either today or tomorrow.

The most intriguing question to me is why T-Mobile has chosen AOL for the deal instead of working with Google’s DoubleClick division - after all, it is the phone running Google’s operating system. But no matter what the reason here is, it is still perfectly clear that T-Mobile has chosen to invest a lot in the internet as the medium for the promotional campaign for G1 - after all, what’s the point in pushing the phone that is created to use online applications mostly to people offline.

It is my guess only, of course, but I have a feeling that this two-day large-scale and pretty expensive advertising campaign is more of an experiment or a trial to see how the market will react and probably plan for something even larger for the upcoming holiday season. If my guess is correct, we will probably see a longer campaign either on AOL’s Platform A or on other advertising networks and it will definitely be good for the overall performance of online advertising business if the scale chosen for the campaign is really this impressive.