Much of Google's advertising growth in Q1 2017, with the search giant earning $24.7 billion, representing a 22% increase over Q1 last year, was driven by mobile search, the company's parent Alphabet said in an earnings call with investors. Mobile added "meaningfully to profit dollars" despite the company's increased focus on traffic acquisition, which adds to costs. YouTube video ads are also leading to an increase in revenue from the site, as the company is spending on acquiring content for its YouTube Red subscription service. Alphabet said there was significant growth in its hardware efforts, like the Pixel phone and Google Home device, and also in Google Cloud. Advertising revenue sees boost with growth in programmatic Google's ad networks raked in $4 billion, which the company said reflected growth in programmatic advertising, in which media buying is significantly automated. There was a slower rate of decline in traditional ad network, but there is little doubt of a shift of advertisers to programmatic. Both Mobile search and programmatic carry a higher traffic acquisition cost (TAC), the company said, and growth in both these segments led to a growth in TAC by 22% year on year. This was partly offset by a shift from the network to Google owned sites, which has lower TAC. Mobile is causing a shift in behavior, though: shopping queries on mobile increased by 45%, and the retailers are providing Google with their local inventory has doubled year on year. "We have increased our investment in machine learning in our advertising business, with…
