AdMob announced today in a mailing to its customers that it was being acquired by Google for $750m.
"After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our developer and publisher partners by:
Building even more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our publishers."
said Omar Hamoui, from AdMob in his email earlier today.
But what does this mean for mobile advertising?
Google's logic for making the deal is to ramp up its position in mobile advertising, seeing that growth in this ad market is likely to be higher than in traditional Pc-based web. It also can be interpreted as a sign that its own AdSense product for mobile was not sufficient in itself to give Google the edge in this market.
Where Google can really innovate is in the area of location based advertising on mobile, by stepping in the gap being left wide open by all the big mobile ad networks (who have capability to deploy LBS ads but lack the commitment from other members of the mobile ecosystem). It is no secret that Google has the best generic mapping product in the market (which was also skilfully deployed on mobile).
By combining its current capabilities with its web know-how and AdMob's mobile ad network, Google is now in a great position to transform the market and can deploy quickly, thanks to its Android platform.
