Google Looks to Drive More Mobile Ads

Google  wants to push more content and more ads onto mobile devices in more regions of the world.

That was the message from John Hanke, director of product management for Google, during a question and answer session at the ThinkEquity Partners LLC Media/Tech Convergence Summit Wednesday in New York.

Hanke said Google is expanding a trial it announced earlier in the year to place ads on content consumed on mobile devices.

“We’ve been in four countries — the U.K., the U.S., Germany and Japan — and today we’re adding eight more countries,” he said.

“That will an create additional revenue stream that we’ll share,” he said.

According to Hanke, wireless carriers and content providers can unleash a torrent of dollars if they tailor their product development and marketing strategies around letting consumers access data through mobile devices.

He added that the local advertising market is worth $100 billion.

“A lot of that [revenue] is going to transpire on mobile phones,” he said.

To that end, he pleaded with carriers to adopt a pay-per-drink rather than subscription model for consumers.

“We think our applications are going to drive data plans, and there’s revenue there,” Hanke said.

“We don’t want to see high barriers for people to get access to Google applications… With some of the carriers, it’s kind of expensive for people to use it. We’d like to figure out ways to drive that down.”

Hanke said that the secret to driving mass adoption of mobile devices, and thus creating even more revenue for carriers and handset makers, is by offering compelling content in a ubiquitous manner.

“We’re for a model that gets the applications out there and gets them widely used.

He pointed to a GPS-enabled Google Maps for Mobile the company launched with Helio.

“That value proposition — maps — really drives people to [Helio’s] higher data plan and that drives higher revenue,” he said.

He closed his remarks by reminding listeners that, “we shared a couple of billion dollars [with partners] on the Web side last year.”

JupiterKagan analyst Joe Laszlo noted that content providers will have to be sensitive to consumers’ desires to get away from the ads.

“Successful ad strategies have to have some flexibility in them to let consumers get away, or the whole value proposition becomes too onerous,” he told internetnews.com.