Referring to numbers that show that video views on mobile devices are up a staggering 160%, Google announced yesterday that the mobile version of YouTube will now begin showing ads.  In particular, the ads will be running on the main YouTube home page, the search page, and the browse page; for now, they will only run on the American and Japanese versions.

For several months Google and YouTube have been testing the ads, and now they’re rolling out for all mobile visitors.  While this move may seem obvious—it is big news.  As mobile devices continue to get more sophisticated, the number of smart phone users will continue to rise.  A natural effect of this will be more and more YouTube views occurring on handheld devices.

It’s not hard at all to see why YouTube (and Google) would be moving quickly to roll out ads on the mobile incarnation of their website.  There may very well come a day where the mobile version serves up more views than the standard YouTube does.

Google is quick to point out that the smart phone crowd is exactly the tech-savvy demographic that most advertisers are after—making YouTube mobile instantly one of the farthest-reaching mobile ad platforms in existence.  They also state that their testing results scored the system high on click-throughs, user experience, and brand awareness.

The banner-style ads will be sold on a full-day basis—which may put them out of the price range of some.  They’re also going to be encouraging their existing advertisers who purchase home page banner ads at YouTube.com proper to go one step further and double down their ads to the mobile version as well.

YouTube is quite bullish about this new offering. After all, there’s no reason to think YouTube’s mobile ads can’t be successful on many levels.  What other ad network is there that can serve ads to so many mobile users in one fell swoop?