Mobile Text Ad Revenues Per Search Much Higher: Google CEO

Google announced its Q4 earnings today, and though it did not break down any numbers for its mobile category, CEO Eric Schmidt talked about it on the conference call in relative length. He highlighted some of the mobile search deals it has done: China Mobile, Samsung, SK Telecom and Apple. It also launched a mobile application for Gmail and a GPS-enabled version of Maps with Helio.
In response to an analyst question about the timeline of new product launches around mobile, Schmidt said: “It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile search query traffic grows substantially. Our current model is to use targeted text ads and we have evidence that the monetization of those ads is higher than in non-mobile uses. So it looks like the advertising revenue on a per-search query is likely to be significantly higher on mobile than on non-mobile.
As part of that, we are investing in new categories of using mobile devices. For example, YouTube content is being used and can be viewed on mobile devices in various partnerships that we’re doing. Those are as much opportunistic for us, and they’re not really driving revenue yet; although in theory, you could imagine a combination of video, video advertising on a mobile phone that would have the best entertainment value but also very, very high monetization rates. We’re unlikely to split it out. It’s not material today in a financial sense, and more importantly, it’s still emerging.
We are making a significant investment in technology around mobile because of the growth rate of mobile and the ultimate scale of that business. You won’t really see its financial impact until ’08.”

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