At a recent digital advertising conference, Google announced that the Internet giant now gets more search queries from mobile devices than desktops in ten key markets, including the United States and Japan.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google executive Jerry Dischler chose not to identify the other eight countries and didn’t comment on when the change actually occurred; however, this shift to mobile is eliciting a fundamental transformation for Google advertising.
Google’s search ads, which are displayed alongside search results based on keywords, are some of the most profitable types of digital ads, yet mobile devices have less space for these keyword-based ads due to their smaller screens. Unsurprisingly, as more consumers search from mobile, Google’s average ad prices have been decreasing. Many analysts link these two phenomena, attributing the decline in ad cost to the increase of mobile searches.
At the company’s quarterly earnings call, Google Finance Chief Patrick Pichette disputed the notion that mobile ads aren’t as lucrative as traditional Google search ads, referencing the mobile search’s strength, success, and continued year-over-year growth in CPCs for their core search business. Pichette also affirmed the decline in Google’s ad revenue is actually due to Google’s skippable “TrueView” ads on YouTube videos.
Google announced they are working to improve their mobile ads with new types of smartphone-friendly ads that utilize more images and are responsive to finger-swipes.
Source: Business Insider