Google to Acquire Mobile Advertising Firm AdMob

Google today announced that it has agreed to acquire mobile advertising firm AdMob in a deal valued at $750 million. AdMob is currently the world's largest mobile advertising provider and is utilized by many of the top ad-supported iPhone applications.

The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:

- Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob's ad formats
- Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem
- Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications - improving their mobile experience

In a blog post about the pending deal, Google executives Susan Wojcicki and Vic Gundotra note the attractive market presented by iPhone and Android users for mobile advertising:

We've written in the past about how mobile phones are becoming an increasingly indispensable part of our daily lives, and we continue to see how great devices with full Internet browsers and vibrant app marketplaces are driving an explosion of usage. In fact:

- iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google's 5x mobile search growth over the past two years
- And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]

Google has also posted an information site with full details of the proposed AdMob acquisition.