Google wants a slice of that smartphone pie with AdSense

The increasing popularity of smartphones has led to further opportunities for advertisers to target consumers and Google is cashing in.

The search engine giant has launched its AdSense application for high-end phones this week, which will allow web publishers to target consumers using Google AdWords – text ads displayed by third-party publishers on their web sites.

With the HTML browsers used by smartphones in mind, Google announced the smartphone platform in a blog post.

Mobile web browsing continues to grow as people spend more and more time online with those smaller screens, there will be an opportunity for advertisers – and Google – to make some money. Furthermore, smartphones will account for 23% of all new handsets by 2013, according to Juniper Research.

Google said, “New features like this help to nurture the smartphone ecosystem by encouraging the creation of more mobile content and by helping advertisers to grow their businesses by reaching new audiences. Our users’ experience is also improved, with increasingly relevant and device-optimized mobile ads that load faster and fit better on small screens.”

Advertisers had been able to run smaller mobile ads that older mobile phone browsers could handle, but they’ll now have an option of showing a more sophisticated ad on a more sophisticated browser like those used by the iPhone and Android handsets.

One of the more interesting stories for Google over the next several years will be whether it can replicate its dominant position in PC-based search and search advertising onto the mobile device.

Smartphone usage is expected to grow over the next several years and has already evolved to the point where they pack substantial computing power.

Apple now has the largest share of the smartphone market in every region of the world except Asia and Africa, according to a recent report from AdMob. It alone has a 40% share of the smartphone market and take son 10.6 billion requests over the internet a month (August figures).