Google: Mobile Growth Occurring Faster Than Expected

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says consumers’ adoption of the company’s mobile services has happened more quickly than executives expected. Schmidt, who is set to step down as CEO in April, spoke at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs.

“It’s happening, and it’s happening faster,” he said. “We look at the charts internally, and it’s happening faster than all of our predictions.”

As an example, Schmidt told the audience that Google sees 200 million mobile playbacks of content on YouTube per day. Additionally, the company saw mobile search spike in conjunction with a real world event — the Super Bowl. When Chrysler advertised on the big game, search on computers surged 48 times over the normal volume of queries, but search on mobile spiked even higher — 102 times the normal volume. Another Super Bowl advertiser, GoDaddy.com, saw an even more profound effect. Search on desktops were up 38 times higher than normal, but mobile was up 315 times higher than the usual volume.

Schmidt also said he saw display advertising playing a strong role in the mobile environment. “I see the union of the mobile device and advertising, and particularly display advertising, as the thing that’s really going to revolutionize this,” he said.

In the past few months we’ve seen Google, which is the creator of the Android operating system for smartphones and tablets, indicate its strong commitment to and belief in the future of mobile. In August, Google said it was seeing a $1 billion annualized run rate for mobile revenues.