“Google is buying engineering talent, vision in mobile, great iPhone interaction data and a self-service ad serving platform for mobile, with a particular focus on iPhone for Webkit and iPhone for in-application advertising.”

via: Mobile Marketer

And what does the Google purchase of AdMob mean for publishers?

I am really excited for Omar Hamoui, Jason Spero, Tony Nethercutt and the rest of the AdMob team on their acquisition by Google.

I am also excited to hear that Google’s go-forward strategy includes investing in ad units. The Google-AdMob deal is a natural fit for mobile performance advertising to address the long tail, but there is a long cycle left before all types of advertisers are addressed on mobile, and the process of getting them excited and then engaged with mobile consumers has only just begun.

The Google-AdMob deal is a victory for consumers, in that more emphasis will be placed on mobile, and as such the consumer experience should improve as a result.

It is a step forward for advertisers, because performance and local advertisers will receive better targeting and reporting on mobile.

However, what this deal does not address are the premium publishers.

AdMob is not the DoubleClick for mobile
BusinessWeek used a desktop analogy to describe the Google-AdMob deal that is beginning to stick, stating that AdMob is the DoubleClick for mobile.

It is an easy comparison in terms of the current size of the mobile advertising market, but it is very misleading in terms of what AdMob is, and what Google is buying.

There are also many people who worry that the Federal Communications Commission will step in and review this deal and potentially restrict it. So here is where the DoubleClick analogy really breaks down.

Google bought a performance ad network in AdMob. Yesterday, a WSJ blog ran the year-old video from Robert Scoble interviewing Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob, in which Omar explained that his differentiator from all other mobile ad networks was that AdMob’s model is completely self-service.

Google is the best self-service advertising technology on the Web and AdMob is the best self-service advertising technology for mobile.

So what is Google getting?
When Google acquired DoubleClick, it was a way for Google to gain publisher relationships.

However, AdMob does not own the premium publisher segment in the mobile market. AdMob has worked with some premium brands, but a large portion of its impressions and publishers come from a whole new breed of advertisers – mobile application developers that used AdMob to promote and monetize their applications.

In mobile, many publishers are not yet selling advertising directly and, as a result, AdMob can be the biggest display network without having a premium model.

But in the end, Google is not buying publisher relationships or even the default publisher ad serving solution for mobile.

Google is buying engineering talent, vision in mobile, great iPhone interaction data and a self-service ad serving platform for mobile, with a particular focus on iPhone for Webkit and iPhone for in-application advertising.

read full article here.