AdMob founder and CEO, Omar Hamoui, says, “We are extremely pleased with today’s decision from the Federal Trade Commission to clear Google’s acquisition of AdMob”

The FTC had to seriously consider the impact of this deal on competition. The search leader’s biggest potential competitor, Apple, unwittingly helped Google by announcing plans to start their own mobile ad network.

Google advertising already includes industry-leading platforms including DoubleClick, AdWords, AdSense and Analytics. AdMob adds to Google’s product offering and will solidify their position in the mobile industry, irrespective of Apple’s attempts to break into the mobile ad industry.

Wasting no time over the question of whether or not the deal would be approved, Google has already been developing a number of new mobile ad formats, which were announced during I/O.

One of the new formats will be expandable ads for mobiles. Google will also enable click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps in the next few weeks. Click-to-call ads will work for ads on the mobile content network and on mobile apps. Advertisers can enable them by enabling phone extensions in an AdWords campaign that targets mobile handsets with full Internet browsers. The ads will appear as animated banner text ads with a call button. Advertisers can enable the click-to-call service by first ensure that their campaign is set to show on “All Available Sites”, setting up phone extensions, providing the business phone number and then choosing to show ads on “Mobile devices with full Internet browser”.

AOL acquired Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising company, in 2007 for $80 million. According to sources in the know, the new CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, and the head of the advertising department Jeff Levick are planning to either shut down the mobile advertising network or just letting all their contracts lapse over a period of time.

It has been reported that AOL is not renewing the deals they have with their existing publishers for their mobile ad network. Instead, these publishers are quietly being allowed to go to AOL’s competitors. AOL has also not put out any new publisher proposals, which obviously means that they are losing a lot of clients, and surprisingly this does not seem to be bothering them, which again indicates an intention to discontinue the business.

A number of current employees of Third Screen Media are reportedly out in the field, hunting for new jobs.

It is believed that AOL will instead focus on developing mobile content and will also rebuild their mobile ad technology, which will then be able to service other AOL-owned properties.

This is certainly a good move at this stage, since AOL will be turning into a separate entity from Time Warner shortly. They will then have businesses like mobile web publishing, AOL Mail, MapQuest, AIM and iPhone apps, which they can monetise.

AOL could always rebuild their mobile advertising business again later with even better technology when the market turns and demand for mobile advertising really picks up.

Mobile phone users worldwide have been growing by the minute, and that obviously means that the mobile ad business will continue to grow further.

According to estimates by eMarketer, the total number of mobile users by the end of this year should be 280.8 million and according to comScore, the number of smartphone users should touch 29 million by then.

AdMob has stated that the number of smartphone shipments worldwide is projected to grow by 13%.

eMarketer also estimates that the mobile ad spend in the U.S. alone will increase from $648 in 2008 to $760 in 2009.

One of the main reasons for this growth in mobile ads is the availability of better mobile websites, which have been optimized for use on mobile phones. Thus users find it easier and more interesting to access the net through their mobile phones.

AdMob which was founded in 2006 with just one employee, and has grown to 85 employees in January 2009, has done very well for itself, particularly in the last year due to these changes in the mobile internet experience. Since June 2008 their monthly ad requests has have grown to 8.3 billion.

According to the analytics firm Nielsen, AdMob is now the third largest mobile ad company in the U.S. after Millennial Media and Third Screen Media.

Their mobile ad revenue is expected to go up by 18.1% this year to $1.3 billion.

When these figures are compared to that of newspaper ad revenue which will be down by 18.7% to $35.5 billion, radio ads which will be down by 11.7% to $15.8 billion and TV ads down by 10.1% to $43 billion one can get a true estimate of how well mobile ads are doing.

The new application, called ROK Promoter, will enable advertisers to not only create and transmit their ads directly to their customers, but will also let them monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns without requiring any outside help.

www.rokpromoter.com

Through the ROK Promoter, videos and images will automatically adjust themselves to fit the size of different mobile screens. It will also be able to handle several different Bluetooth transmitters in various locations and will provide statistics regarding the impact of various ad campaigns on the audience.

“Opt-in, one-to-one marketing, through mobile phones and, in particular, being able to reach customers at that crucial point where buying decisions are being made, is becoming ever-more important and valuable to advertisers, says Laurence Alexander, Group CEO of ROK, “so we set out to make the process of creating, delivering and monitoring such campaigns as easy as possible for advertisers.”

As the initial set up cost of proximity marketing via Bluetooth is relatively low, it has become quite an attractive proposition for advertisers. Licenses will be available to advertisers on a weekly, monthly and long term basis as per their requirements. Advertisers can interact with consumers on their mobile phone by setting up Bluetooth transmitters in locations where they believe they can catch their niche audiences.

Bluetooth marketing had taken a back seat in the past as it required specialised companies to provide services, but with the launch of ROK Promoter things could change quickly.

It is estimated that the Nokia Media Network reaches over 100 million customers worldwide, allowing their advertisers to promote products and services to their target audiences on the premium mobile Internet publisher pages, operator partner portals and Nokia services pages that are all part of the network.

Click through rates for ads on the network are touted to be about 10% which is considerably higher than the average click through rate in the industry.

Nokia already has Reuters and Cosmopolitan on-board and some of the new companies that will now be included in the Nokia Media Network are:

• Agence France-Presse, France
• RTL Mobile, Germany
• Cuatro, Spain
• Grupo Prisa – Publisher of El Pais, Spain
• Unidad Editorial _ Publisher of El Mundo, Spain
• CNET, U.K.
• Telegraph Media group, U.K.
• Trinity Mirror, U.K.
• International Herald Tribune, Pan-European

Business Development Manager, of Agence France-Presse, Otman Meriche says, “Agence France-Presse has joined the Nokia Media Network because Nokia has demonstrated leadership in building a global media advertising service. Our advertisers are looking for brand-safe, high performance media, and Nokia’s understanding of the mobile channel is unrivaled.”

The world’s largest handset maker is also pushing advertisements to publishers’ mobile websites by acting as an ad platform, known as Nokia Interactive Solutions. Their services the group provides include mobile banner ads, mobile coupons, mobile websites, location finders and click to call ads.

Nokia seems to be seriously going head-to-head up against Google in their quest to dominate the mobile advertising market. Like Microsoft, they own the lion’s share of the actual medium used to access the Internet. However, Nokia might have the advantage in mobile as there isn’t any established norm and users’ habits are just being formed, unlike on the desktop where users have become creatures of habit and Microsoft’s battle is much more to change user mindsets than to develop a superior product.

This announcement will be good news for mobile publishers. It will eventually improve their income through automated access to various networks, thus helping to fill available inventory. The earlier practice often tied down publishers to a single network. Now they are in a position to choose whichever network offers them the best deal.

Ari Paparo, DoubleClick’s product manager says, “This integration is a great example of how DoubleClick is working with key industry players, to bring value to publishers by enhancing the liquidity of mobile display inventory. Publishers who have a tie up with DoubleClick Mobile will be able to sell mobile inventory indirectly through any of the above networks.

DoubleClick Mobile will provide details about what inventory has sold directly, what has been taken up by the ad networks and what is still available for sale. Publishers will have better income earning potential through direct and indirect sale of ads.

Paul Palmieri, President and CEO of Millenial Media, believes that the tie up with DoubleClick Mobile will allow publishers to accept ads from their own roster of leading advertisers without limiting their right to direct sales, thereby bringing more publishers into mobile advertising. Although DoubleClick is a part of Google, they have decided to remain neutral (for now) in order to benefit their publishers.

With the number of mobile Internet users increasing, publishers are naturally expected to try and use this opportunity to the best possible extent to maximise both direct and indirect sales.