14 DAY TRIAL // There's little doubt that Google is very interested in the mobile space and it said so several times before, but, if you need to hear it once again straight from one of the top people at Google, you can take Vic Gundotra’s, Google Engineering's vice president, word for it. He states the obvious, namely that Google is now deeply invested in mobile, but also puts a rather interesting prediction out there, he says mobile ad rates will surpass the ad rates for its traditional offerings aimed at desktops.
"Google has bet big on mobile," Gundotra said in a webcast for investors. Not that you need to hear it from the company to know it, Google has been attacking the mobile market and pushing it forward from all directions. Its Android smartphone operating system is growing in market share at a rapid pace and it has even developed its own mobile device, the Google Nexus One, with more than a little help from HTC.
It's also creating an increasing number of mobile apps. Google now says that it's not just stripping down features to make versions of its apps that run on mobile phones, it's designing them with mobile in mind from the ground up.
And it's paying off, as Google claims that mobile search traffic has increased five times in the past two years. "When we see desktop usage decline, like when people go out to lunch, that's when we see mobile spike. We think these are brand-new searches that we would never have seen previously," Gundotra said.
This is why Google is seeing a much bigger opportunity in the mobile advertising space. It says that, since smartphones have begun to pick up in sales, ad rates have been skyrocketing to the point where, if the current trend continues, they should surpass those on the main search engine, or its conventional ad network. "With improved technologies like location capabilities, we hope and believe that there's even a chance that it can exceed the desktop in the future," Gundotra added.