Google executives said that mobile has a positive impact on its bottom line as the company continues to invest in its largest growth opportunities with the highest long-term ROI?search monetization, display, enterprise and mobile.

Google reported revenues of $6.82 billion for the quarter ended June 30, an increase of 24 percent compared to the second quarter of 2009. Google claims it saw strength in every major product area, as more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising and as large advertisers increasingly ran integrated campaigns across search, display and mobile.

?Overall, we are very pleased with our second-quarter results,? said Patrick Pichette, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google, Mountain View, CA, in a conference call. ?Solid growth in our core business and very strong growth in our emerging businesses, including digital advertising, drove 24 percent revenue growth year-over-year.

?More and more traditional brand advertisers are embracing search and search advertising to build their brand online and running integrated campaigns across mobile display and search,? he said.

?For example, P&G has become one of our top advertisers in the U.S., a sign that CPG brands realize that people research online and buy offline.?

Humans fall for Android
Google claims that two Android devices are activated every second for a total of more than 160,000 every day, which is up from 65,000 Android devices activated per day last quarter.

Most of those devices are developed completely independently of Google by handset manufacturers such as Motorola and HTC in conjuction with carriers.

In addition, Android Market now has more than 70,000 applications.

Google claims that Android search traffic grew 300 percent in the first half of this year.

?Mobile has growth 500 percent in the last two years in terms of traffic, Android being an accelerator of that,? Mr. Pichette said. ?What you have is the whole Android ecosystem exploding.?

The growth in Google?s display advertising revenue over the quarter was also very strong, per Mr. Pichette.

Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its AdSense partners, increased approximately 15 percent over the second quarter of 2009 and decreased approximately 3 percent over the first quarter of 2010.

Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its AdSense partners, increased approximately 4 percent over the second quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 2 percent over the first quarter of 2010.

?Our continued focus on this product area clearly produced results,? Mr. Pichette said. ?We?ve seen increased demand from display advertisers as well.?

As an example of ths growth, brands such as Coke, Visa, Nike, Sony and InBev launched campaigns on YouTube during the World Cup.

?YouTube continues to see very impressive growth, as brand advertisers also consider it a must-buy,? Mr. Pichette said.

Search is clicking
In addition to its burgeoning mobile advertising business, YouTube gets tons of traffic from mobile devices, as does Google?s search engine.

While Google would not comment on the discrete effect on revenue from mobile, its impact continues to grow at a healthy rate, the company confirmed.

?In mobile, our revenue continues to grow as advertisers continue to opt into mobile-specific campaigns,? Mr. Pichette said. ?The successful completion of the AdMob acquisition gives us a very strong mobile advertising platform to continue to grow the business.

?The richer the ad, the more the advertiser is willing to contribute because it is more engaging and thus creates a better revenue opportunity,? he said. ?We?re providing better returns for advertisers so we are able to price the ads better.

?Because people are searching, people are clicking, and the quality of the ad network and the units continues to improve.?

Google also announced a strategic partnership with Omnicom.

?Agencies are realizing the value of integrated buys across platform that include search, mobile, display and YouTube,? Mr. Pichette said. ?In addition to Omnicom, we also have deals in place with Publicis and GroupM.?

Google claims that click-to-call ads on high-end mobile phones are doing very well.

Click-through rates on mobile ads increase 6 percent when the advertiser includes a phone number and increase 8 percent if they include a local address.

?Mobile is certainly growing faster than other clicks,? said Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president product management at Google. ?Everything else being constant, we?re seeing a disproportionately larger proportion of mobile clicks than there has been in the past.

?If people are searching for something on their phone, they?re more likely to click if there?s a click-to-call or click-to-Web, and innovating ad format efforts also serve to increasingly drive clicks,? he said. ?The most popular mobile app is the browser.

?People search more on smartphones now than they have on any other device in years past.?

Final Take
Mickey Alam Khan, editor in chief, Mobile Marketer

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