Google CEO Eric Schmidt Speaks to the Power of Mobile in his Internet Advertising Bureau Keynote Speech

In his keynote speech at the Internet Advertising Bureau Annual Leadership meeting, Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a message concerning the advertising power of mobile. In his speech, he makes heavy use of statistics gained from the recent Super Bowl and how the extremely expensive advertisements affected mobile search displaying a powerful impact.

In fact, this seems to link together well with a short article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review about how 2011 is the year of mobile. And Google seems to be aiming that way like few others.

The Super Bowl event is huge for advertisers as it has a gigantic audience and it’s one of the few occasions with such a broad audience actually watching for advertisements. Sinking or swimming on that advertisement slot can mean a lot. As we’ve already seen with GroupOn who had to learn a harsh lesson about their decision. Schmidt quoted search rates to support his argument that mobile is becoming the next big effect.

He specifically contrasted mobile searches verses those done from desktops. For example, Chrysler searches boosted 102 times during the game on mobile, where as desktop searches only topped off at 48 times. GoDaddy received a vast boost with almost 315 times on mobile, with only 38 times on desktops. Obviously people are more likely to be in the vicinity of their smart phone than they are likely to be with their desktop computer.

I wonder how the long tail figured into the game for the entire day as people trickled back to their desktop computers.

Also, social media probably played a vast place in the way that people experienced the Super Bowl and the advertisements themselves. In fact, it also represents another avenue yet untapped by Google for marketing, such as how Twitter and Facebook had a huge impact on who probably came out ahead during the parade of advertisers.

He also spoke about how people bring their smart phones along with them when they go shopping, providing a resource unknown to most shoppers until the advent of the devices. Instead of having to take along catalog pages from other stores to compare prices—something that only enabled shoppers to understand those products they expected to find. Now, if shoppers stumble across something they’d like to buy they can pull out their smart phone, pop up their favorite consumer reports website and get informed.

Needless to say, Schmidt is gleeful with expectation about this sort of behavior. “People are fundamentally better off with a better and smarter and more empowered, if you will, customer,” he says.

Empowered customers who use their smart phones in order to inform themselves on the product they just saw in an advertisement—and this will probably make Google, as the gatekeeper of search and cheap smart phones, very busy and extremely happy.