Google buys up smartphone-ad-serving rival as it gets deeper into mobile
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is buying mobile advertising startup AdMob Inc. for $750 million in stock.
The search giant has snapped up the mobile-ad-serving specialist as it gets deeper into wireless advertising. AdMob has a global ad network that serves ads to various smartphone platforms and runs a mobile analytic service that tracks the market. (See AdMob: Mobile Internet Growing and Analytics Goes Mobile.)
Google derives the bulk of its ad-driven revenue from wired Internet sources at the moment. This is starting to change, however, with the advent of the iPhone, Android, and other highly Web-capable smartphones. (See Mobile Apps Face Uphill Climb.)
Google said in its most recent financial reporting that mobile-search revenues had grown 30 percent quarter-on-quarter. Google makes the majority of its revenues from ads that get served up as users search on its service.
Financial analysts from Jefferies & Co. Inc. recently predicted that the company's mobile search revenue will "cross the $500M mark in 2011, up from roughly $180M in FY09." (See Analyst: Google Mobile Search to Top $500M by 2011 and Smartphones Boost Google Mobile Search.)
"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," Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in a statement on acquisition. (See Google to Buy AdMob.)
AdMob was started in 2006 by CEO Omar Hamoui. The firm had gathered $28.2 million in funding by the end of January 2009. It is based in San Mateo, California. (See AdMob Grabs an Additional $12.5M.)— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
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