The Year of the Mobile? Is it here yet?

THIS YEAR IS THE YEAR OF MOBILE! Wait…let me rephrase that. NEXT YEAR IS THE YEAR OF MOBILE MARKETING!

How many times have we heard that before?  WHICH YEAR WILL IT BE!??? WILL IT EVER COME FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!???  Who knows! All we know is Google is looking to expand its market leadership in the mobile sector, which might be something to get excited about.  The search giant had recently acquired the mobile marketing startup, Admob, for $750 million.  First, it was Google’s Android mobile OS that penetrated the mobile market finding its way onto HTC  and Motorola (Droid) phones.  Now, Google has plans to make sure its mobile marketing machine reaches the growing numbers of smartphone users.  Admob specializes in display ads and would bring about a more rich, graphical display of ads to Google’s text based ads.

Yes, Google does have the resources to develop its own marketing channel but instead wanted to get a head start and accelerate its growth in this rapidly growing field ahead of its competitors: Microsoft and Yahoo.Mobile Advertising is estimated at $416 million this year according to emarketer and is expected to grow to $1.6 billion by 2013.  Maybe as Google makes a bigger presence within marketing in this sexy medium sector, marketers will increase their spending on mobile marketing and then we can finally and officially say:

“THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE MOBILE!”