• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 9, 2009

Google announced Monday that it will acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. The Mountain View, Calif. company says the deal improves on its existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice.

Google expects the deal to help it develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ad formats on mobile phones. As mobile advertising and content continue to grow, the company expects the market will give advertisers better access to mobile users through AdMob's ad formats.

Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, in a prepared statement admits that "mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium, and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time."

For publishers and developers, the deal gives them a method to monetize content more effectively, which has benefits for all companies that support mobile content. Consumers will be served up more relevant ads, and ultimately gain access to more ad-supported content and applications to improve the mobile experience.

Google executives are not the only people in the industry who believe the deal supports its strength in the mobile channel. "The AdMob acquisition is Google's message to Microsoft that Redmond won't hold an exclusive reign over the mobile marketplace," says Mark Simon, vice president of industry relations at Didit.

Aaron Goldman, managing partner at Connectual, tells Online Media Daily that Eric Schmidt has long touted the potential of mobile, admitting he believes the mobile Web will become bigger than the computer-based Web. "Google has already made investments on the back-end with Android, and is co-marketing the new Droid handset from Verizon," he says. "It's only logical the company would invest in the advertising side of the mobile business."

Goldman says AdMob fits the Google model of playing middleman between marketers and publishers. And it's likely that Google will succeed in mobile where it failed in radio and print largely due to the signal that exists with a two-way platform. In other words, Google can tell how people respond to marketing messages in this channel and optimize accordingly.