Six months and a federal investigation later, Google has finally sealed the AdMob deal. On Thursday, Google announced that its acquisition of the mobile advertising company is complete.
The Federal Trade Commission delayed the acquisition with an investigation into possible antitrust issues that could arise in the wake of the search giant adding a prime-time mobile advertising network to its war chest.
But the FTC determined the deal is not likely to hinder competition. That freed Google to begin integrating AdMob technology into its mobile advertising platform. Google didn’t offer a timeline on the integration.
“It’s clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients’ and partners’ strategies and, with this acquisition, it’s now a central part of our own business,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management.
Integrating AdMob
Wojcicki added that Google will continue to invest in the highly competitive mobile space as it works to combine the strengths of its technology and resources with AdMob’s mobile advertising solutions. At the heart of a Google-AdMob combo will be search. Wojcicki said Google’s mobile search volumes have grown more than fivefold in the past two years.
Wojcicki also pointed to Google efforts like “click-to-call” search ads that let advertisers include a local business or national phone number in their ad text that consumers can click to reach the business directly via phone. Finally, Wojcicki promised many more advances to come to facilitate mobile search advertising.
Beyond search, Google is betting on mobile display and text ads on mobile web sites. Wojcicki called AdMob a pioneer in that space, as one of the first companies to serve
ads inside mobile applications on the Android and iPhone platforms.
Is Google the Mobile Winner?
“The AdMob acquisition makes Google arguably the strongest all-around player in mobile advertising with both search and…