Google purchased mobile ad firm AdMob for $750 million Monday, placing a heavy bet that targeted ads on mobile devices could assist diversify Google's income stream.

While Google already has text ad that accompany mobile searches, AdMob specializes in graphic ads that show up on web pages and mobile applications. AdMob collects demographic data on mobile users, and charge a premium to let advertisers choose to target professionals, teens or early adopters. While Google still makes the majority of its revenue from text ads it display next to search results, the company has been seeking to diversify that model for years.

Google has successfully become an ad publishing network for other sites, through its AdSense program, and in 2007, spent $3.1 billion to acquire DoubleClick, which serves banner ads on thousands of web sites around the Internet. Google integrated that tracking and serving technology with its own, in hopes of gaining more adveritising dollars.

Now Google is be betting big on mobile ads. The iPhone has shown that mobile phone users will spend lots of time on their devices and on the Internet. Google's sort-of open source mobile Android operating system has grown to become a formidable force in the smart phone competition, with Google's own applications - and ads - at the heart of those applications.

Google pulled in $5.96 billion in revenue in the 3rd quarter of 2009 and had $1.65 billion in profit. Search engine text ads accounted for 67 percent of that revenue, while 30 percent comes from ads on other publishers' web sites.

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