Mobile Growing Faster Than “All Our Predictions”- said Google CEO

Mobile use is growing faster than all of Google’s internal predictions, with YouTube seeing 200 million mobile playbacks a day, CEO Eric Schmidt said in his keynote at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership meeting keynote.

As proof of mobile’s growth, Schmidt cited some statistics related to this year’s Super Bowl advertisers. The number of mobile searches for Chrysler, for instance, jumped 102 times during the game, compared to only 48 times for desktop searches, Schmidt said. And the number of mobile searches for GoDaddy jumped 315 times, compared to 38 times on desktops.

Schmidt, who spoke Sunday at the IAB event in Palm Springs, California, also said that 78% of smartphone owners use their phones while they shop. “This is the future and everyone will adapt,” said Schmidt. “Because people are fundamentally better off with a better and smarter and more empowered, if you will, customer.”

Mobile growth is occurring at a quicker rate than anyone expected, Schmidt said. “We look at the charts internally and it’s happening faster than all of our predictions,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt, who will leave his post as Google CEO on April 4, used those stats to make a case for linking display advertising and mobile. “The technology has finally caught up with the promises we talked about for so long,” said Schmidt. He predicted that display advertising could hit $200 billion business, though he declined to say when that milestone would be reached. Display is currently a $17 billion business globally. Google’s share of that is about $2.5 billion a year.