AdMob, to cease serving advertisements on cellular internet, calls on Google builders to make use of AdSense – TechCrunch

When Google bought the AdMob mobile advertising network for $ 750 million in 2009, the company was clearly trying to capitalize on the growing mobile advertising market. Mobile advertising, both in apps and on the mobile web, is a natural extension of Google’s display and search ad business. Of course, certain AdMob functions were deleted during the integration last year because they did not fit into the overall strategy or were for reasons of redundancy. For example, Google ended AdMob’s cross-advertising download exchange a few months ago. And now, Google is announcing that it will soon end AdMob’s mobile web serving capabilities.

As Google aptly titled his blog post announcing the change; AdMob is for mobile app developers. AdSense is intended for mobile web publishers. Even after over a year of integration, Google is still clearing the overlap and has decided that mobile web publishers should use AdSense to monetize their websites and mobile app publishers should use AdMob.

And for mobile app advertising, all beta participants have moved from AdSense for mobile to AdMob, which Google says is now the primary ad solution for mobile app developers.

Google says that AdMob support for older WAP cellphone websites will end on September 30th. For websites and ads that can be viewed on more advanced mobile devices such as smartphones, the AdMob product will be available for a little longer, but will also be phased out at some point.

It makes sense that there would be some overlap between the mobile offerings of AdMob and AdSense and that certain programs and functions in both platforms would be shortened and further integrations made. For example, Google announced last fall that developers of iPhone and Android applications on the AdMob network could run Google AdSense ads when no AdMob ad was available.

And despite some previous reports that the AdMob integration didn’t go that well, the mobile ad network metrics are still growing like a gangster. It’s unclear how much trouble this move will cause developers (Google sounds like a natural evolution and integration), but it definitely doesn’t make sense that there are competing ad serving technologies within the same organization.