Just 4 days ago Google released a guide titled ‘The Mobile Playbook’ to arm businesses and marketers with answers on how to build and invest in the mobile platform to interact with the growing army of smartphone and tablet users.

Reading through it (which shouldn’t take no more than 30-40 minutes) would give all of us a sense of déjà vu. Its release couldn’t be more timely since it covers discussions that we blog and talk about in-depth week after week. Building the case from an infrastructure, organizational and media perspective it covers topics related to the mobile business value proposition, destination optimization, the local nature of mobile, consumer experience, marketing integration and peppered with examples from companies like Chase, Walgreens, Hotels.com, Starbucks, Priceline, Zipcar, 1-800-Flowers.com, Coke, Domino’s and many more.

Even though the examples cited are of multimillion-dollar companies, I would believe that the Playbook is intended to help medium and small enterprises make headway with mobile, and more so with the local and immediate nature of mobile, these businesses stand to benefit. If 97% of mobile searches belong to Google their intent to monetize it further is clear. Their latest quarter earnings (($10.75 bn- Q1 ’12) reported a 12 % drop in CPC (cost per click) over the first quarter of last year though clicks were up by 39%. Confirming that the business has a healthy revenue trend, Nikesh Arora – Google SVP and Chief Business Officer also acknowledged that complex factors which include the growth of mobile and tablets – because mobile doesn’t monetize as well as desktop – in addition, other factors like developing market growth, exchange rate effects and ad network dynamics are responsible for the decline in CPC. While there was no mention of mobile revenue earned this quarter, at the last quarter earnings call of 2011 CEO Larry Page had casually remarked that mobile had grown 2.5 times to over $ 2.5 bn.

Google also acknowledged surprise and success with its Click-to-call mobile search offering last year. I think they realize it’s obviously is not enough and will pull out all stops to ensure a fertile ecosystem that can drive revenue in areas beyond mobile search to include a piece of the pie from the mobile and social shopping impending boom. If more local businesses build a mobile presence the more they could stand to gain as smartphones and tablets continue growing as handy shopping companions that will drive local search traffic.