Google launches advertising on YouTube mobile sites

Google today announced that it will now be adding banner advertising to its YouTube mobile sites. According to the company’s blog, the ads will appear on U.S. and Japanese mobile websites for home, browser and search pages.

Google notes that adoption of the YouTube mobile site saw rapid growth in 2009 with an increase of 160 percent resulting in the streaming of tens of millions of videos every day. The move is yet another example of Google’s push into mobile advertising. Most notable its recent acquisition of mobile advertising network Admob for $750 million.

The company claims that its launch provides one of the biggest audiences for a mobile campaign anywhere on the web and that it will provide easy segmentation of that audience. It would appear Google has run several “test” campaigns – mentioning Land Rover and L’Oreal – and have figured out that banner ads running on a full-day basis works best. Mazda appears to have launched a campaign today as well.