Google Now Offering Mobile Banner Ads

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsnpo7XU3cc&hl=en]

Google has added image (banner) ads to its mobile ad offering.

The Google Mobile team writes:

These look like standard image ads for desktop web pages but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile content network. Take a look at the mobile image ads example page to see samples….For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page. For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility.

Banner sizes in actual size per the picture right.

The new offering from Google places the company up against Yahoo, AdMob and others in offering a full range of mobile advertising options.

There’s a market for this style of ad, but how big is the unknown question, particularly at a time where mobile phones are moving towards a full browser experience instead of a cut down version.

The other consideration: how many people click on ads on their phones? I straw polled a hand full of people when this question came up months back and I couldn’t find one person who could remember clicking on an advertising on their mobile phone…accept for the odd accidental tap. Would you?