Citi Tech Conference: Google’s Armstrong On Mobile Ad Revenue: Keep Waiting

Citibank analysts don’t think mobile will be a material source of ad revenue in the US this year but perhaps it will be in Aisa.

Tim Armstrong, Google’s president, Advertising & Commerce, North America, appearing at the Citi Investment Research Technology Conference in New York, when asked how Google regards the potential of mobile advertising to grow significantly this year sounded a cautious note and declined to offer any stronger predictions along the lines of “wait until next year—maybe.” Among the issues he identified as holding Google and marketers back from greater mobile ad activity: scalability. He also wondered whether the iPhone will grow more quickly and if that will translate to more mobile ads sooner rather than later. Armstrong: “I think the non-iPhone analog devices will see search grow. Typically, we don’t scale all of our resources until we see movement on the consumer side. We’ve been selling ads on mobile for the last 18 months. You should expect to see more over time. But it took a number of years for search to get going, and it will be the same for mobile to pick up as well, from an ad revenue perspective.” Armstrong didn’t have much to say about Android or the possible mobile version of Google’s new browser, Chrome, but he did discuss the state of the search ad business and the quality (or lack thereof) of YouTube videos.

 

(Source moconews.net)