As news of Google’s attempted acquisition of the daily deals site Groupon ricocheted around the Web, one big question loomed large: Wouldn’t it be easier for Google to build out a similar service than pay several billion dollars for Groupon?

Not really, said Susan Wojcicki, a senior vice president for product development at Google who oversees the company’s advertising products. Ms. Wojcicki was one of the featured speakers on the second day of the D: Dive Into Mobile event at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco.

“It’s hard to assemble a team and organize as quickly as you want in these situations,” she said in an interview. “Finding the right people, interviewing them and hiring them takes time. Companies are willing to pay a premium to be in the market right now.”

Ms. Wojcicki declined to discuss Groupon specifically, instead pointing to Google’s competitive bid in late 2009 to buy AdMob, a mobile ad company, rather than try to build out a service internally.

“You’re buying people with expertise and learning about new markets,” she said.

Ms. Wojcicki would not say whether Google would increase its offer for Groupon, try to buy one of Groupon’s competitors or build its own version of a coupon service. But she said Google would continue to pursue both internal and external options in an effort to crack the local advertising market.

“It’s a big opportunity, but the market is still nascent,” she said. “It’s hard to know yet what will work.”

One area the company is eager to explore, she said, is experimenting with innovative ways that cellphones can help Google better deliver local advertising to users. She pointed to a recent campaign with Google Goggles that let cellphone users scan a print advertisement to unlock additional coupons and deals.

“The phone is incredibly important for local commerce,” she said. “It’s not quite developed yet, but seeing where users go and check in for offers has a lot of power. Before we didn’t know that they had arrived in a store. Making ads more relevant based around that is an interesting opportunity for small businesses.”

“We want to connect users to local advertisers,” she said. “There are many models and ways in which we can do that.”