Google Expands Mobile Ad Network (USA)Online search leader Google Inc. is expanding the volume of advertising that it delivers to mobile devices, hoping to make more money from the expanding audience of consumers surfing the Web when they’re away from home or the office.
With the expansion announced Monday, any Web site accessible through a mobile Web browser will be able to participate in Google’s vast advertising network. The company previously had been serving up mobile ads based on search requests entered directly into its engine or its partners’ sites.
Now, Google will tie the mobile ads to a wide range of content being scanned by consumers on a cell phone or some other kind of portable device. For instance, someone reading about a football game on a mobile phone might see an ad for sports equipment or memorabilia.
If a consumer clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays Google a fee that is shared with the publisher of the mobile Web page.
The approach mirrors a highly successful network called AdSense that has helped establish Google into one of the world’s most powerful companies. Hundreds of thousands of Web publishers belong to AdSense.
The mobile AdSense network will be open to publishers 13 countries, including the United States, England, Germany, Spain, China and India.
Most of Google’s ad revenue, which is expected to exceed $15 billion this year, currently comes through online searches and Web pages viewed on personal computers connected to the Internet.
Google and its major rivals, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are now trying to extend their ad platforms and other services to the mobile market as sleek new mobile devices like Apple Inc.’s iPhone make it easier to roam the Web without relying on PCs.
Some analysts believe mobile ads eventually will become more even more lucrative than marketing through traditional PCs connected to the Internet.
With the stakes so high, Google is widely believed to be working on some kind of mobile operating system software or perhaps even a mobile phone to ensure its efforts to distribute ads aren’t undermined by the owners of proprietary wireless networks and handsets.
Dilip Venkatachari, product management director for Google AdSense, declined to address questions about whether the Mountain View-based company is developing a phone or a mobile software.
Google also has publicly said it might bid at least $4.6 billion in a government auction of wireless spectrum that would provide faster Internet access than cellular networks. The Federal Communications Commission auction is scheduled to be held early next year.
