I’ve been pouring over yesterday’s news of Google’s AdMob acquisition, and given the conversations I’ve had with various members of the mobile ad monetization industry, I’m left wondering if Google didn’t acquire the wrong company. At the very least, I’m left curious as to the motivations behind the AdMob purchase.

Stick with me here, and keep in mind I’m not saying this because Millennial Media is a sponsor of SiliconANGLE (yes, that’s right, in-line disclosure), I’m saying this because I’ve spent hours on the phone with industry analysts and peers in the mobile monetization business, and the only thing I’m convinced that AdMob maintains leadership in is public relations.

Back in July, John Furrier and I spent a lot of time doing research in the mobile monetization in the world trying to get a handle on the space, since we both knew we were interested in trying to meet the demand for mobile stories and information from a platform agnostic position (rather than a position of evangelism, which is what many other blogs and organizations seem to do).

Google Acquisition Day

Keep an eye on our ongoing coverage of the Google-AdMob story as well as other rumored acquisitions today on SiliconANGLE. –mrh

Is This About Mobile Ads or About Ailing Androids? [AdMob-Google]

Google Acquires AdMob For $750 Million In Stock

Another One Bites the Dust, AdMob Acquired By Google

Rumor: Google To Purchase VoIP Solution Gizmo5

/SABackchan: Accel Partners Now King of the Hill

We talked to analysts at Nielsen as well as executives at Millennial and AdMob to get the pitches on why their ways of measuring their audiences were better.  AdMob said that raw ad impressions and surveys are the best way to measure audience. Millennial took a more nuanced approach, instead talking about reach, CPEU and unique visitors. Nielsen sided non-committally with Millennial’s view of audience measurement, but talked about how nascent measurement was in that world and, and how it’s particularly difficult to pick a clear winner.

After weighing the options, we wound up picking Millennial’s point of view as the one that made the most sense. AdMob’s way of measuring their audience is pretty akin to the traditional Web’s way of measuring audience: the flawed CPM model. Shelby Bonnie, former Chairman of the IAB, recently very famously exclaimed on Techcrunch that the CPM model needs to die on the web, and to properly value content on the web, we should move beyond that.

So while innovators on the Web are trying to find a way to better monetize the audience there, Google is rewarding the mobile industry that benchmark their success in a nearly 15 year old model.

That’s Fine, but What Do You Base This Assessment On?

Where are the numbers to back this up?  We reached out to Nielsen this afternoon to get updated numbers and are still awaiting a response, but as of the summer Nielsen ranked the leaders in mobile ad audience with Millennial Media taking 74% of all potential audience, and AdMob a distant fourth at 51%.

Those numbers have since become much more muddied, since the AdMob acquisition of AdWhirl (which is more of an ad service aggregator), and now because of AdMob’s acquisition by Google, it’s unclear as to how much of the audiences overlap with one another and how much are complementary.

Incidentally, we receive through our sponsor relationship with Millennial what they call the “SMART Report” every month, which we report on in Sean’s Mobile Monday posts.  The data in the SMART Reports is generally analyst style assumptions and conclusions based on trends and movement they’re seeing in their own analytics.  As I noted back in July and again in August, the Millennial Media internal analytics very closely mirror those that Nielsen produce.

Why, then, is AdMob the one getting acquired?

As I said, I reached out to our friends at Nielsen today, but they are still assembling their analysis post acquisition.  We made a few attempts to reach folks we knew at AdMob, but received no acknowledgement of receipt from them at all. Update: AdMob refused to offer comment at all on the acquisition, and referred us to their PR firm. It’s definitely a move that indicates that they don’t “share cultural values with Google,” as their founder Omar said in a press release yesterday (at least not all of those cultural values).

Out of respect for their competitors, even our friends at Millennial are being pretty tight lipped on background quotes with regard to the acquisition. Sean P. Aune reached out this morning to Millennial to get their impressions on the deal.

“What happened yesterday was astounding,” said Paul Palmieri, Millennial’s President and CEO. “Google’s perspective has always been that mobile is just the internet.  Google has validated what many companies to include Millennial have thought for years – that mobile is a different market with a huge potential for advertising; possibly a bigger opportunity than online media.”

While all of that is true, it doesn’t answer a lot of questions we had, like whether or not they were in talks with Google, were ever approached, or were even interested in selling out. As I said before, AdMob’s PR is second to none, and could it be that because of the fawning press coverage of the iPhone monetization darling that Google was drawn to them?  I see it as a possibility.

Another distinct (and more likely) possibility is that this was a market position acquisition, rather than a marketshare play.  While they’re in the top five of the market, AdMob’s position doesn’t really put them ahead of that many companies in mobile ad monetization.  That means the only unique identifier for the company could be their technology or their market position. 

What This is Really About: Google Hedging It’s Bet On Android

As has been pointed out here and elsewhere, AdMob focuses on a very tiny segment of the larger mobile smartphone market: iPhone apps. In case you haven’t heard, Google’s been pretty gung-ho on this whole Android thing, which is it’s gambit on extending their monetization of the web to the mobile space. While they certainly haven’t made any overt moves undercutting their faith in Android, this move signals a ‘take-no-chances’ strategy by the search giant.

In other words, if this thing we’ve spent years developing and deploying fails to make us a second mint, we’ve always got Steve Jobs’ phone thingy to fall back on.

That’s really the bottom line here – this story is less about the mobile monetization world and says a little more about the way Google Android is playing out in their long term plans to dominate the mobile web the same way they dominated search and web advertising – otherwise Google would have stopped at nothing to acquire the only market leader that would have given them a decisive lead over all others.