Although there is a large gap between the number of queries and mobile’s share of search advertising, but more and more search queries are originating from mobile devices. With more and more, smart phones coming to market (which now represent almost 20% of the US handset market) Google will do what all it can do to get more penetration in to the Google search market.
Below is a forecast on US mobile search revenue and mobile internet users. According to this report, US mobile search advertising revenues would grow from $33 million in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2012 and the number of mobile Internet users would grow from 38 million in 2007 to 92 million in 2012.
Looking at these stats it’s quite evident that there is a huge growth year on year in mobile search market. At present Google doesn’t have a separate bidding interface for mobile, both AdWords for PC and Mobile are in same interface. In terms of display ads, rates for mobile placements were much higher than on the PC in the past but ad rates have come way down over the past year. This is partly because of ad network competition and the fact that consumers are adopting the mobile web faster than advertisers and there are now many more page views than ad inventory to fill them all.
In coming years one thing to watch out would be Mobile Search. Growth in Google’s Mobile traffic has been 5X over the past 2 years. So, if you are already not using mobile search than its right time to be a part of this fast growing market.
