When the largest adserver/affilaite-program on the web goes mobile, the affiliate marketing community is going to notice. However, Google's reason's for launching mobile AdWords has more to do with advancing local search than it does with upgrading the product that affiliate marketers depend on to monetize their traffic. In other words, affiliate marketers shouldn't be too concerned about optimizing their portal's for mobile traffic just yet. It's little wonder, then, that the RevenueWire Blog advises:

Affiliates DO NOT [...] need to be early adopters here, rushing to build special versions of their sites for mobile access. First and foremost, unless the affiliate offer you’re running is in any way an offer that a mobile user would reasonably want to access from their phone, don’t bother. They’re not going to search for and download/buy desktop software or sign up for some diet program on their phone.

You see, Google's decision to optimize AdWords for mobile is all about reaching users seeking out local products and services. Mobile surfing is still something that's rather expensive for the average user. Therefore, if the average user is online via their mobile, it's likely to write an important email or find directions. In a word, they're interested in local products and services. The likelihood that they'll be perusing affiliate portals is rather low.

Affiliate marketers who are interested in mobile users, then, should be considering local-oriented portals. These are the only kinds of portals that promise to be high sources of mobile traffic in the near future and, therefore, could be monetized using Google's recently mobile-optimized Adwords. In a word, don't worry about optimizing your affiliate portals for the mobile users -- not just yet, anyway.