• by Shankar Gupta , September 7, 2006

Google is currently testing a new service that allows paid search advertisers to distribute pay-per-click and pay-per-call text ads to mobile phones in the United States, the U.K. and Japan, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

The text ads will appear when a user searches using Google from a mobile device; the ads will contain two lines of text, with 12 to 18 characters per line. Marketers must purchase the ads through the standard AdWords interface, and also must have either a mobile Web site for pay-per-click ads, or a toll-free phone number for pay-per-call ads.

David Berkowitz, director of strategic planning for search engine marketing firm 360i, said Google's entry could make the world of mobile advertising more accessible to smaller advertisers. "Right now, there's only so much mobile search buying going on, but Google's done a great job integrating this into their overall AdWords system," he said. "There's a lot of mobile advertising companies, it's a really chaotic, confusing space, so for a lot of marketers, this could be a relief for them."

Tom Burgess, CEO of mobile marketing firm Third Screen Media, added that Google's initiatives in the mobile marketing space lend the medium credibility. "To see a company that's so well regarded as Google pay homage to the opportunity of mobile advertising is a great thing," he said. "They've got a lot of marketers that buy from them. Now that they've got a mobile solution, those marketers are going to be further exposed to mobile."