Google Ready to Show the True Value of Mobile Advertising

The sheer proliferation of mobile devices has brought with it a major opportunity to offer advertising to all those new users of such devices, but at the same time, a lot of businesses are leery of jumping on new bandwagons, wondering where the real value is in advertising to such a wide and varied population. Google recently brought out an array of new reports and studies designed to show off just how valuable mobile ads really are, and why, in turn, it's a good idea to have some in the marketing toolbox.

All the studies and such that Google is releasing is said to be part of a wider initiative being called Full Value of Mobile. With Full Value of Mobile also comes a calculator that can determine just how much return on investment marketers can expect—it's not a guarantee, of course—for several different forms of mobile marketing. Included in the calculator is a determination of value per click, clicks to call a business, and even mobile ads geared toward generating visits to brick-and-mortar locations.

Mobile advertising has come, somewhat, under fire of late. Many of the traditional measures are tough to apply to mobile devices, and displaying advertising on small screens isn't exactly having the impact some would hope for. Worse, tracking the impact on sales is also proving difficult, and that's one of the key measures many advertisers use when determining how to allocate spending on advertising. Google had some proof of mobile's excellence thanks to a study it had recently concluded with Nielsen, showing that a third of mobile searches ended up with a positive result—a phone call initiated by a potential buyer, a visit to a store, or even an outright purchase—but suggesting that mobile was responsible for the actions was tough to conclude.

But Google is ramping up the flow of information, thanks to the result of some conversations like those staged with Radio Shack and Adidas, to make the connection between mobile advertising and those positive results. It's a new path to a purchase, so to speak, and taking advantage of that path is important for any business. Google is looking to offer up more ways to improve from there—optimization of mobile ads, for example, and ways to track purchases, calls and visits.

Google has a lot riding on this strategy. One of Google's biggest revenue sources is advertising in general—in 2011, reportedly, advertising accounted for 96 percent of Google's revenue—so convincing advertisers that mobile is a viable advertising platform is the kind of thing Google would want to do. Clearly, Google has a lot going on in terms of making advertising better overall, and thus more attractive to advertisers. Effectively demonstrating the connection between mobile advertising and desirable consumer behavior is the kind of strategy one would expect, and is certainly one that plays to Google's strengths overall. Only time will tell if the strategy pays off, but it's a safe bet that, indeed, it will.