AdMob has announced today that they have signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 Million in stock. AdMob was founded in 2006 by young Arab entrepreneur Omar Hamoui as a mobile ad network focused on selling and serving display ads on mobile browsers. However much of its recent growth has come from mobile apps — an area where iPhone and iPod Touch devices dominate. The company has worked with thousands of advertisers to serve mobile ads to more than 15,000 websites and mobile applications.
Before AdMob, Omar Hamoui founded two separate mobile start-ups that never got significant traction. Omar writes in a statement on the website that it was so frustrating to build what he knew was an incredible service only to find myself unable to distribute or monetize the product without a carrier or handset deal. Yet he remembers that he used to have a cynical saying that summarized both the promise that mobile possessed and the monumental barriers we could not cross: “Mobile is the future, and always will be.”
That frustration is what led me him to found AdMob a few years ago while he was in grad school. Over the years, AdMob has been a part of helping to create a healthy and vibrant environment where developers and publishers, small and large, can both promote their services as well as benefit from the attention and usage their products attract.
Omar said in joint-press release with Google “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”
The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:
- Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob’s ad formats
- Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem
- Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications – improving their mobile experience