AT&T’s David Krantz: Mobile Now 1/3 of AT&T’s Local Search

Mobile now accounts for a third of AT&T’s local search, according to AT&T President and CEO David Krantz, who was speaking at the Borrell show last week in New York. “We truly believe that mobile is bigger than the Web,” said Krantz, noting that AT&T has some significant head starts over rivals as a vertically integrated company. For instance, the YP.com app is preloaded on many of AT&T’s phones.

Krantz also noted that AT&T has made big strides in behavioral targeting. It started with Yahoo’s APT system, and quickly sold tens of millions of dollars worth. “We had been very skeptical selling APT to customers,” he acknowledged.

But the APT product with Yahoo was priced at a high CPM and eventually hit a wall. The company has now developed a lower CPM product, which he calls “Display 2.0.” They are ad networks for targeted display,” said Krantz. “We’ve had an initial runup like we did with Yahoo, but it has kept going.”