Google (Blog): “Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That’s what has us excited about this deal. – For publishers of mobile websites and applications, this deal will mean better products and tools and more effective monetization of their content – allowing them to focus more on their users and less on how to generate revenue. – For advertisers who want to reach users when they are engaged with mobile content, this deal will bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. It will also mean more interesting, engaging ad formats.”

NYT: “The all-stock deal is modest for Google, given its roughly $177 billion market value. But it is the third-largest in its history, behind the $3.1 billion deal for the advertising specialist DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. … Founded in 2006, AdMob calls itself the “world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace.” The company, which has received $47 million in financing from venture capitalists and other investors, refused to disclose its revenue.”

Mashable: “While one of the biggest deals we’ve seen come out of the Web space in some time, it’s not completely unexpected. When Google reported earnings last month, we noted that the company now has $22 billion in cash, and CEO Eric Schmidt said his company feels ‘confident about investing heavily in our future.’ That’s certainly the case here, as Google has just made a very big bet on mobile ads.”

SEL: “Postscript from Greg: I was able to speak to Google and AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui briefly today. The acquisition puts Google at the forefront of mobile display advertising and instantly brings Google a great deal of sophistication in the segment that it previously did not have. In fact that’s one of the things that Google emphasized in the discussion: they get a team that has been working the space and thinking about mobile display for four (or more) years. – Google also alluded to a potential for ‘holistic’ approaches to display advertising when I asked explicitly about whether there was going to be some future cross-platform ad buying capability.”

TC: “This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel – they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA). More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate Capital.”

RWW: “Now the iPhone rules. AdMob’s own numbers claimed that mobile traffic from the iPhone and iPod touch grew 19X over the last year. AdMob is making a strong play on the iPhone. TechCrunch reported this Spring that the company claims to be the biggest mobile app ad network on the iPhone and is working on a traffic exchange system for app promotion similar to what’s been done on Facebook. … Does Google want to see someone else leading the ad monetization on its own mobile OS just like it is now poised to do to Apple? No way. The answer? Buy AdMob. – It’s a very smart move. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google’s share price rose this morning to its highest point in almost 18 months.”

VB: “Google hadn’t focused much on the iPhone, in part because it had built a competing mobile phone system called the Android operating system. It’s now the basis of dozens of smartphones and is poised to come into its own over the next year with models like the Motorola Droid unveiled last week. – With AdMob’s exclusive focus on mobile, especially the iPhone and its exploding application ecosystem, the biggest treasure it offers Google is its know-how in terms of dealing with app publishers and advertisers.”

ClickZ: “Additionally, AdMob is one of a very small club of ad networks – catering to any channel – that Google has attempted to acquire. In 2007 it bought FeedBurner, an RSS feed management platform that also operated as an ad network.”

Forrester: “Big picture: mobile advertising remains a small fraction of the overall interactive marketing spend. Google, however, expects mobile to be a key growth driver in the coming years, and the acquisition of AdMob plays right into that strategy.”