June 15 (Bloomberg) -- AdMob Inc., the mobile-phone advertising startup backed by early Google Inc. investor Sequoia Capital, expects sales to double this year, drawing the attention of potential acquirers.

“We’ve had conversations,” Chief Executive Officer Omar Hamoui, 32, said in an interview in San Francisco, saying two companies have approached AdMob this year. “I wouldn’t say that any of them have gotten really serious, but we’ve definitely had conversations.”

AdMob, which sells ads displayed on the small screens of wireless devices, has raised almost $50 million in venture capital from Sequoia, Accel Partners and other investors. The company is benefiting from the growth of smart phones, such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry, which let users surf the Web and download applications.

While the broader online advertising market is slowing, AdMob’s sales have grown 30 percent faster than the company expected this year, Hamoui said. The company handles 7.5 billion monthly advertising impressions -- the number of times an ad is presented for viewing. San Mateo, California-based AdMob expects to have 160 employees by the end of the year, up from 109 now.

Hamoui said he has no plans to sell the business, adding that the recession has made it a buyer’s market. The company is growing fine on its own and getting close to generating positive cash flow, he said.

Bad Time

“It’s not a good time to sell a house, it’s not a good time to sell a car, it’s not a good time to sell a business,” Hamoui said.

AdMob hasn’t touched any of the $12.5 million it raised in a November funding round with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Northgate Capital, Hamoui said. Sequoia led the company’s first financing round. In addition to backing Google, which now competes with AdMob, Sequoia also invested in Yahoo! Inc.

Hamoui doesn’t expect the company to go public in the next year or two, saying AdMob hasn’t made the internal preparations needed for that step.

The company was founded in 2006 in Hamoui’s dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The company initially just sold Web links, before branching out into graphical ads about a year later.

The company helps place ads from companies such as Best Buy Co. and Nike Inc. on mobile applications and Web sites. The ads typically take up about a seventh of the screen, said Jason Spero, general manager for AdMob in North America.

AdMob makes its money by splitting the revenue with Web site and software publishers -- typically taking about 40 percent, Hamoui said.

“Things are accelerating a lot faster than we anticipated,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at Bwomack1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 15, 2009 07:11 EDT