Google launched brand image ads for mobile phones, saying they are similar to standard desktop Web page image ads but are formatted for smaller screens and run on the mobile content network.

In a post on the company’s mobile blog, Alexandra Kenin, product marketing manager for Mobile Ads at Google, wrote: “For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good click-through rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page.” Kenin said the new mobile image ads also will provide greater flexibility for publishers.

With the announcement, Google joins Yahoo!, AdMob, Third Screen (now owned by AOL), Microsoft and other companies that offer image ads for mobile devices.

Google said its mobile image ads are available in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK and the United States.