Of the various figures put out in Alphabet/Google's (GOOGL) - Get Report first-quarter earnings report, none looms larger than 53%. That's the annual growth rate recorded for paid ad clicks and impressions on Google's own sites and apps.

Let that figure sink in for a moment. Google, a company that did close to $80 billion in ad sales last year, one that's more than a decade removed from achieving search dominance, managed to increase the number of ads it was paid for on its own properties by over 50%.

The figure says a lot about how much smartphone activity continues to grow Google's addressable market, and how effective it has become at monetizing this activity.

Alphabet reported Q1 revenue of $24.75 billion billion (up 22% annually) and EPS of $7.73 (up 28%), topping consensus analyst estimates of $24.22 billion and $7.38. As of the time of this article, Alphabet's Class C shares are up 4.2% to $929.00 and making new highs. They're now up 17% on the year.

Paid clicks rose 44% overall, with the 53% growth on Google properties partly offset by the more modest 10% growth (still better than in recent quarters) on non-Google sites and apps. That figure is still better than the 39% and 32% growth respectively seen in Q4 and Q3 of last year after accounting for a change in how Google records paid clicks. Not surprisingly, CFO Ruth Porat said mobile search growth remains the biggest driver behind Google's paid click momentum, with YouTube and programmatic (software-automated) ad sales also playing roles.

Weighing on revenue growth: Google's cost per click (average ad price) fell by 19%. That's larger than the 15% decline seen in Q4, and stems from a continuing shift towards smartphone search, YouTube and programmatic ads that carry lower prices than PC and tablet search ads. In addition, traffic acquisition payments (TAC) continue to rise due to mobile ad revenue-sharing payments to smartphone OEMs, carriers and developers: TAC was equal to 10% of Google properties ad revenue, up from 8% a year ago, and 22% of total ad revenue.

On the other hand, the "Google Other" reporting segment, which covers non-ad businesses such as Pixel phone sales, Google Play transactions and cloud apps and services, once more provided a lift. Its revenue rose 49% to $3.1 billion, and is now equal to 15% of ex-TAC revenue. The "Other Bets" segment, which covers businesses such as Google Fiber, Nest, Waymo, Verily (healthcare tech) and Google's investment arms, saw revenue rise 48% to $244 million. But it also posted an $855 million operating loss (up 10%).

As much as things like the Pixel and self-driving cars get more media attention, Google's bread-and-butter search ad business is still easily its biggest profit growth engine. And for all the concerns that have understandably existed about mobile users bypassing Google Search in favor of going directly to apps -- Amazon.com's (AMZN) - Get Reportshopping app especially -- the business' addressable market keeps growing thanks to three trends: Smartphones are growing total search activity, e-commerce keeps taking share from offline retail and the use of mobile ads to get consumers to shop at local/offline businesses continues to grow.

And Google has worked hard to exploit these trends by doing things like creating mobile-friendly expanded text ads and shopping ads, offering new local ad formats, making it possible to purchase items advertised on Google without leaving its mobile site, helping offline retailers figure out when an ad click resulted in a store visit and using machine learning to optimize ad bids based on how an ad is expected to perform. As the CPC decline shows, Google still has more work to do to improve the payoff delivered by many smartphone ads, but it's safe to say that past fears about mobile monetization now look quaint.

Likewise, YouTube, which now sees over a billion hours of viewing per day (up 10 times since 2012), is seeing its opportunity grow thanks to mobile video viewing and the movement of brand and e-commerce ad dollars to online video channels. On this count, CEO Sundar Pichai insisted Google's efforts to deal with the March advertiser backlash caused by YouTube's hosting of extremist content are paying off, and talks with advertisers (said to number in the thousands) have been "very positive."

Other interesting disclosures from Google's report and call:

For the first time, Google provided geographic sales data for four regions. Including TAC, U.S. revenue grew 25% to $11.8 billion, EMEA (hurt by a strong dollar) grew 13% to $8.1 billion, Asia-Pac grew 29% to $3.6 billion and "Other Americas" 34% to $1.3 billion. Like Facebook FB ) - ) - Get Report , Google's ad sales still depend heavily on the U.S. and Europe.

, Google's ad sales still depend heavily on the U.S. and Europe. Google's app install ads, which run on Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and third-party apps, have now driven over 5 billion downloads. Facebook has historically been the leader in this space, but Google now appears to be a strong #2 player.

Android added nearly 300 million users last year thanks to emerging markets growth. Google reported having 1.4 billion active Android users as of September 2015; it might be around 2 billion now.

Costs and expenses rose 22% annually (even with revenue growth) to $18.2 billion, with subdued operating expense growth of 15% offset by higher TAC and hardware cost growth rates. But capital spending rose just 3% to $2.5 billion, after rising sharply in Q4. That, along with revenue growth, allowed free cash flow to rise 35% to $7.04 billion.

Google had $92.4 billion in cash at the end of March. 60% of it was offshore -- actually a modest percentage compared with what many other tech giants have reported.

With the stock now trading for 28 times a pre-earnings 2017 EPS consensus of $33.33, Google isn't as cheap as it used to be. At the same time, the company's execution in recent quarters, along with its ability to put fears about its mobile growth potential to rest, have arguably done much to justify some increase in the web giant's multiples.

TheStreet's Eric Jhonsa and Scott Berman previously covered Alphabet's earnings and conference call through a live blog.

Jim Cramer and the AAP team hold positions in Alphabet and Facebook for their Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells GOOGL or FB? Learn more now.



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Editors' pick: Originally published April 28.