Online restaurant guide Zomato seems to be finally focusing on monetization with the introduction of advertisements on its mobile apps. Prior to this, Zomato featured ads only on its website earlier. Zomato mentions that users will see in-line ads for other relevant dining establishments in & around that location on search result pages. The company claims these ads will be contextual to their search and location. Zomato co-founder and COO Pankaj Chaddah mentions that they have been experimenting with this over the past few months to make ads "as relevant to the consumer as possible". Although, we feel the ads probably need some more work in terms of relevancy. For instance, we got biryani & lunch buffet ads when we searched for pizza outlets in Bangalore. This is a critical move for Zomato considering that more than 50% of its userbase are on mobile phones globally, and this number is expected to further grow with the increasing adoption of mobile Internet, since there might be users who might just skip the web and go straight to mobile (Also read: The Switch To Mobile). Mobile platform will also enable Zomato to serve more contextual hyperlocal ads to consumers, since they will be able to collect more data from mobile phones like location among others. Zomato's focus on monetization Earlier this month, Info Edge founder and vice chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani had mentioned that for the past 12-18 months, Zomato was prioritizing getting to traffic leadership in markets because they believed that monetization will follow. “If it follows you six…
