The Google marketing manager Alexandra Kenin informs that Google AdWords now offers mobile image ads. The ads are the same as typical Google image ads but small enough to fit on a mobile phone’s screen.

The new service is available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It means that the ads will only appear on pages accessed by the users on mobile devices from the above mentioned countries.

All mobile image ads are priced on PPC model and are keyword-targeted.

Kenin says that this new ads serve as a branding tool for advertisers and are said to have good clickthrough rates. In addition, advertisers could also benefit from mobile image ads as only one ad unit is displayed per one mobile page.

The mobile publishers can now opt for which type of ad (text, image or both) want to be displayed on their pages. If they select both types of ads, Google will automatically select the ad type to be served.

For mobile web surfers, Google says these image ads would match ads to web content and would not deteriorate mobile web browsing experience as they can click only on the ads that interest them.

Have a look at the mobile image ad sizes or watch the demo video