Google ANZ boss bemoans slow migration to mobile advertising

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 14:43

IT Industry - Market

The biggest single challenge facing Google in Australia this year will be advertisers' lack of strategies to embrace advertising on mobile devices, according to the head of Google ANZ, Nick Leeder.

In a piece published in advertising industry magazine, B&T, Leeder said: "The growth of the mobile market is exponential and set to take over as the main method of accessing the Internet in just a couple of years'¦Australia is going mobile in a big way."

In a recent study with Ipsos Research, Google found that Australia had the second highest smartphone penetration in the world - ahead of the US, UK, and Japan, and according to Leeder: "The majority of smartphone owners we surveyed had bought their device in the preceding 12 months. One in three had bought it in the last six months. This amounts to a dizzying pace of growth: we estimate that every month, one to two percent of the Australian population buys a smartphone and already over 20 percent of Australian Internet searches are now from mobile devices."

Leeder added: "Forty nine percent of the people we surveyed use their smartphone to research and then call businesses - while 45 percent have visited a business they've found using their smartphone. One in four had made a purchase using their mobile phone, while one in five had searched for a house or apartment.

However he offered no indication as to what Google planned to do to address its biggest challenge and precipitate and accelerate the migration of advertisers to the mobile web.