On Tuesday, September 17th, Google began selling ad space on web pages via cell phone. AdSense for mobile is a big deal from a big company. With AdSense, Google is jockeying for position in a fledgling market. As noted in this New York Time's article, the mobile advertising market is currently small.

As an advertising sector I expect mobile to make a larger leap into the mainstream. With Google's AdSense going mobile, I'm apparently not the only one with these expectations. According to a report by Veronis Suhler Stevenson (which was released prior to the Google announcement), internet & mobile services will become the fastest-growing advertising channel, doubling to $61.98 billion from 2006 to 2001.

Make no bones about it. Mobile is coming. To some degree it's already here, think of all the people who have cell phones. The tiny plastic devices we started carrying around to make emergency calls have worked their way into our lives as technology we NEED to have. It's a logical place for the convergence of interpersonal communication tools (the phone, email), production tools (planners, calendars, memopads, password keepers, web browsers), and personal commerce (checking bank account balances, writing digital checks).

Why not advertise on mobile devices? Afterall, a recent study by iProspect and Jupiter Research says that offline influence on online search sites yields a 39% conversion rate. With that in mind, if I'm walking down the street with my Blackberry and see a billboard for a new restaurant. I can go onto my mobile phone - search out an online reservation service - make a reservation, or maybe put off the reservation for this restaurant in favor of another restaurant that Google might notify me about via AdSense mobile, or from a review I had seen on the reservation site. Either which way, I've gotta eat - so I literally feed into that 39% conversion rate.

-justin