Photo: AdMob

Mountain View, Calif., USA - May 27, 2010

Google (NASD: GOOG) announced that it has closed its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising form AdMob.

Last Friday, we said that mobile advertising was moving fast. So are we!
Today, we closed our acquisition of AdMob.
Omar Hamoui has built a great team and great products at AdMob and we’re thrilled to officially welcome them to Google.

We’ll now begin the process of bringing our products and teams together in the best way, and building new products and features together.
We’re working to make this integration happen as fast and as seamlessly as possible.
We’ll actively keep our clients up-to-date as we bring our businesses together - stay tuned!

Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob Photo: AdMob

It’s clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients’ and partners’ strategies and with this acquisition, it’s now a central part of our own business.
In continuing to invest in this highly competitive area, we’ll be bringing together our technology, resources and expertise in search advertising with AdMob’s innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications.

Mobile search is central

One of the key ways that people find and access information on their mobile devices, just like on the desktop, is through search.
As smart phones have proliferated, we’ve seen dramatic increases in mobile search volume.
Over the past two years, Google's mobile search volumes have grown more than fivefold, at an accelerated pace. In the first three months of 2010, people with smartphones with “full” WebKit browsers (such as the iPhones, Android devices and Palm Pre) searched 62 percent more than they did in the previous three months.

The experience begins when a user launches one of their favorite apps in our network. As the app loads, the video immediately begins playing. Photo: AdMob

Increasingly, people aren’t just typing search queries into their mobile devices.
They speak them, they take photos of them and they even translate them from different languages.

In addition to traditional search ads on mobile devices, we’ve worked to develop entirely new search ad formats.
“Click-to-call” search ads, for example, have been really popular.
They enable advertisers to include a local business or national phone number directly in their ad text that you can click to reach the business directly via phone.

As the video plays, users can touch customizable action buttons to engage more deeply with the campaign. Photo: AdMob

This is a really great way for you to easily get information from a relevant business (say, a local restaurant), and a highly effective way for advertisers to connect with interested customers.

With many more advances to come, search advertising will remain the central way that many businesses connect with consumers on mobile devices.

Mobile websites and apps

In addition to search, another key way that people access information is through mobile websites (accessed through a browser) and mobile apps (available through Apple’s App Store, the Android Marketplace and more).

Mobile display and text ads make it easy for publishers and developers to make money from their mobile websites and apps, and enable advertisers to extend the reach of their campaigns to relevant mobile content.
In this area, AdMob has been a real pioneer and has innovated at a tremendous pace, building a successful business and working with thousands of advertisers, publishers and developers.

The “Get App” action button is ideal for brands with branded apps such as EA, as users are just a touch away from opening the app store to download their app. Photo: AdMob

AdMob was one of the first companies to serve ads inside mobile applications on the Android and iPhone platforms.
They’ve developed a host of engaging and creative ad units for Android and iPhone apps - for example, interactive video ad units and expandable rich media ads.

Google has also been developing new features for in-app ads.
For example, last week, we announced that we’ll be making “click-to-call” ad formats available to developers who run AdSense in their mobile apps.
With Google and AdMob starting to work together, there’s lots more innovation to come in this area.

The future

It’s clear that mobile advertising is growing incredibly fast with lots of businesses innovating at great speed.
Every day, more marketers are looking to take advantage of the mobile-specific capabilities, extended reach, great returns and value that mobile advertising provides.
Advertisers are now starting to see mobile as an essential part of their overall campaigns, not just a silo-ed experiment on the side.

We want to unleash agencies’ and advertisers’ creativity on all mobile devices and deliver them better results from their campaigns, drive better returns and more choice for publishers and developers, and help people get better ads and more free mobile content.

We believe that mobile advertising can play a significant role in every single marketing campaign.
We’re passionate about the unlimited possibilities in this space.
Today, with AdMob, our work to make them a reality begins.


Posted by Susan Wojcicki
Vice President of Product Management at Google


http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/weve-officially-acquired-admob.html  



Susan Wojcicki
Vice President, Product Management at Google

Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management at Google Photo: Google

Susan Wojcicki is vice president of product management at Google responsible for the design and innovation of all of Google's advertising and measurement platform products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics.
She has managed AdSense product management since inception in 2002, and has led all advertising programs on Google.com and its advertising network since 2006.

Susan joined Google in 1999 as the company's first marketing manager and worked on the initial viral marketing programs as well as the first Google homepage doodles.
She also led the initial development of several key successful consumer products including Google Images, Google Books and Google Video.

Before joining Google, Susan worked at Intel and was a management consultant at Bain & Company and R.B. Webber & Company.

She graduated with honors from Harvard University, holds a master's in economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and an MBA from UCLA.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/execs.html#susan  



Video demo of the auto-play Interactive Ad Unit

http://blog.admob.com/2009/11/17/new-interactive-video-ad-units-for-iphone/  



ASTROMAN Magazine - 2009.11.15

Google to Acquire AdMob

http://www.astroman.com.pl/index.php?mod=magazine&a=read&id=601