Google announced Monday a new option for its AdWords advertisers to have access to, or even target, mobile devices with fully HTML-compliant browsers -- to wit: iPhone and the Android-based T-Mobile G1. AdWords is the advertising program Google offers for results on its own search engine, and the new feature will display those ads on the mobile-formatted version of search results the company sends to mobile devices.

The company is allowing its advertisers to either include mobile pages, exclusively target mobile pages in their campaigns, or specifically exclude them. Those advertisers can also get separate performance reports for ads displayed on mobile pages.

In Google's announcement, Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads team, noted that these ads displayed on these phones can point to normal desktop landing pages, meaning that advertisers don't have to create special mobile landing pages due to the capabilities of the mobile browsers in question.

This move is an important one for Google for two reasons. The first is that the economic slowdown has had an impact on the search giant, as many of its advertisers have trimmed advertising budgets. The second is the growing size of the mobile-based searches that Google is seeing.

Ms. Kenin wrote, "The ads will have many of the same benefits as our standard mobile ads, such as the delivery of mobile-specific calls-to-action and reaching mobile users that are searching with their phones more than ever -- especially during the holiday season."

Monetizing the search results that iPhone users are making could well become an increasingly important part of Google's business.