Google finally got the deal with AdMob done. What a pain in the ass for them. The FTC jumped in their underwear from day one. I was against the FTC involvement from the beginning. No need to go into that just read my posts on the subject here.

The big play now for Google is to get rolling on a fully integrated AdMob performance system for mobile. AdMob made their bones on the iPhone and now hopes to have the same impact to Android.

Mobile Is Surging Big – But Still Early

Mobile usage is surging big and it’s still early. This entire area is intoxicating from an entrepreneur and user perspective. So much opportunity. This is why the AdMob deal was very good for Google and most definitely strategic.

Just this week the largest and still independent mobile ad network Millennial Media just released their SMART report – which shows the mobile network usage patterns.  A couple things that stand out about this month’s report include:

· The number of users who access the Mobile Web increased by around 2% in March – that’s 1.3 million people in one month – and is now over 73 million

· Retail and Restaurants have seen in increase in mobile advertising and have entered the top 10 of mobile ad verticals

· Social Media represented 11% of all campaign actions in the Millennial network in April.

What the Millennial Media stats show is that the market is growing, mobile is clearly mainstream, and social media is becoming the real deal. Although social media is still littered with folks who don’t know what they are talking about and think social media is Facebook and Twitter only.

Changing Landscape of Mobile – It’s Not Search

Online advertising has been a disaster for years. No offense Google, but search advertising doesn’t relate to the new user experience in mobile. Everyone is just shrugging their shoulders, “Yeah we know it (search ads) is ineffective and produces a poor user experience on mobile, but there is nothing else available”.  Enter the world of social networks, better broadband, social media, virtural goods, etc… , now the picture is getting clearer.

The future is bright. This is where Admob and competitors like Apple and Millennial Media come in.

New Models Coming

The public secret today in online advertising is that search based advertising is saturated. Banners are sliding into the land of irrelevance.  As more and more online advertising dollars flood into the mobile sector, new advertising mobile media will capture most of the revenue.

What will the new advertising media be? It’s not search but instead "consumer media", "customized media", “vertically focused media” and “social media”, among other new approaches.

We are already seeing a flourish of new kinds of ad networks developing. Social networks are where the most exciting and relevant digital advertising solutions are developing. Social networks have unique micro-targeting capability and amazing behavioral measurement capability. Just look at how Twitter is positioning themselves and the new role that crowdsourcing is playing.

The big question is, “What is the ad unit?” What does contextual mean now?" Is behavioral still relevant?

New Viable Solutions

Social networks, video content, social media, community driven content, crowd endorsed media, and other forms of contextual and behavioral advertising will emerge as the viable and scalable solutions.

Who will lead this new model of advertising? The users and new consumer behavior.

Advertisers go where the users are and the new user behavior is not about page views, banners, or search ads anymore. Although search ads won’t die their overall percentage of the marketing spend will shrink which shows why Google paid $800m for AdMob.

Catalyst for Change?

The big catalyst is money. Too much money is coming into the sector for these solutions now. The combination of ‘social network’ and ‘social media’ (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) will be a big driver to transition to the new ad models both in mobile.

I can’t wait to see which big advertisers lead this trend. Certainly Google, Apple, and Millennial Media get this trend.