NEW YORK -  A Google executive has high expectations for the mobile space and search specifically, according to his keynote at the Mobile Marketing Association?s Mobile Marketing Forum. 

Mike Steib, director of emerging platforms at Google, Mountain View, CA, said that 2010 is a transformative year for mobile marketing. Mr. Steib spoke after CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O?Brien gave her opening keynote at the event.

?When I heard [Soledad O?Brien talk] about a pastor?s story about people using their mobile phone in church to enhance the Bible worship experience, I automatically think about how to get an ad in front of them,? Mr. Steib said. ?Mobile advertising is something Google is very passionate about.?

Google is extremely excited about the AdMob deal. However, Mr. Steib noted that Google is not the only player in the space.

He said there is Apple with its iPad and the new iPhone 4.

Twelve years ago there was this idea of the device that does everything. Its your TV, computer and telephone.

This idea has come to life with the new smartphone devices coming to market.

?New devices blur the line between desktop computers and mobile,? Mr. Steib said.

Behavior is converging and the acceleration of devices getting traction is increasing as a result.

After launch, it took 74 days for the first iPhone devices to ship, compared to 28 days for the first iPads.

Smartphones will surpass feature phones in United States' market penetration by 2011.

Mobile search
Mr. Steib is very bullish when it comes to mobile search. He said that Google has seen a 500 percent  growth in mobile search from 2008 to 2010.

The company has seen a 67 percent in mobile queries in the last quarter alone.

Mr. Steib also discussed the fact that Internet behavior on mobile is similar to the behavior across full browsers.

?For frequent searchers the diversity of their queries is greater,? Mr. Steib said. ?The fact that I have device with me allows me to search where I am.?

According to Google, the No. 1 video site in the world is YouTube. YouTube Mobile is the No. 2 video site.

Mr. Steib gave out some interesting data on mobile search during the Super Bowl 2010.

There were huge spikes in mobile queries around commercial for GoDaddy and Dockers.

?Mobile searches spiked during the Super Bowl because there is a group of people that were glued to their TVs and used their mobile phones for searching as opposed to getting up to their PCs,? Mr. Steib said.

?Mobile marketers should be psyched about this,? he said.

Google believes that when it comes to mobile, openess will win because people are behaving with smart devices the way that they did with their PCs.

Google has seen great success with Android so far. It has 60 compatible devices and is working with 69 manufacturers.

Android is seeing 100,000 new activations per day. It is second in U.S. smartphone sales.

?For marketers I don?t suggest thinking about one device or carrier,? Mr. Steib said.

The Google exec talked a lot about applications. The company plans to grow its application network via the AdMob deal.

So far Android has seen 3 billion application downloads.

The average Android user downloads 40 applications. And, 25 percent of iPhone and Android users spend 2 hours per day in applications.

HTML5 will drive mobile Internet as will the faster more powerful capabilities of 4G. 

Location-based services will become critical in mobile. In the case of mobile search one-in-three queries have local intent.

Consumers are using LBS to search near them, find friends nearby and call local businesses. This opens the door for many options for local mobile marketing.

Marketers can use click to call, sponsored ad listings, mobile coupons and provide consumers with local product inventory.

Mr. Steib talked about how AT&T?s data caps will effect the growth of mobile Web and content.

?Analysis shows this will affect like 2 percent of users but the trend line shows that more and more people will use more data,? Mr. Steib said, ?Data caps make sense when what you are selling is limited.

?I understand the decision by AT&T,? he said. ?But for the space more broadly, broadband is really important.?