U.S. Cellular, JumpTap team for mobile search and ads

Is this the bit that will lead U.S. Cellular to add data plans to its prepaid service? Once can only hope. The nation’s No. 6 wireless carrier has employed JumpTap for its search and advertising solutions. I have an issue or two with this, but if it brings mobile Web to prepaid for U.S. Cell, it’s tough to complain. But I’m always up for arguing, so let’s go.

I’m not a big fan of combining search and advertising. Normally, it leads to searches that suck. I’m not looking for content that Provider X paid to put in front of me. I’m looking for the query I entered in the search bar. Yet, it appears JumpTap doesn’t care what I’m looking for. It cares about the content producers that pay them.

From the press release: “Additionally, local and national content publishers and advertisers will be able bid on search queries to further hone their target market for each specific ad campaign.”

See? Obviously, this can be good for content providers and advertisers. They can bogart the search queries. As the late, great Russell Shaw said of this year in mobile search: “Mobile Search will still suck.”

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