There’s an interesting article this week in ClickZ, looking at the development and future of ad networks for mobile. As the mobile ad industry has changed a lot over the past year or two, the ad networks themselves have also been developing. more»

Senator Barak Obama‘s presidential campaign made mobile history over the weekend by sending out 2.9 million SMS messages announcing Senator Joe Biden as the Vice Presidential candidate. It is the first presidential campaign to make a major announcement via SMS, and it is also perhaps the largest mobile marketing campaign ever in the US. more»

Penguin Books is one of the best known book companies in the world. Nick Hornby is a bestselling author with several novels that have been made successfully into films, including About A Boy, Fever Pitch and High Fidelity.

When Penguin launched Hornby’s latest novel SLAM – his first to be directed at a teenagers – they decided to reach this audience by using a very innovative mobile campaign that involved downloadable audio, celebrity voices, and the Blyk mobile network. more»

Feeling a bit confused by all the rapid advances in mobile phone usage and the development of the mobile internet? This may be the book for you. With the introduction of the latest “Dummies” book, Mobile Internet for Dummies, consumers can now learn to unleash the power of the mobile Internet from their own mobile phones, no matter what phone they have or what wireless carrier network they use. more»

YouTube (owned by Google) has announced that they have started running a test of display ads on certain pages of their mobile site, in an effort “to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising.” more»

Madhouse, Inc., one of China’s largest mobile ad networks, reported that they have served over 2.3 billion mobile ad impressions in the first 6 months of 2008. This is nearly 5 times the total number of ads served in all of 2007. more»

JumpTap, the mobile search and advertising company, announced that it has closed a Series D round of financing in excess of US$26million. The investment was led by AllianceBernstein L.P. and all existing investors participated. more»

The MMA has announced they are seeking public feedback on their Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines. The guidelines are intended to encourage the uptake of mobile advertising by brands worldwide whilst enhancing and protecting the customer’s experience. more»

Mobile entertainment community Limbo has released their Mobile Advertising Report for Q2 2008. This study shows an increase in consumer awareness of a variety of mobile advertising campaigns, “from text message to interactive games to mobile internet banner advertisements”. Download the study. more»

Platform-A, the advertising business of AOL, has launched a new third-party ad serving platform through Third Screen Media, the company they acquired just over a year ago. The platform offers “inventory partitioning”, a new technology which Platform-A says will increase monetization for publishers. more»

ChaCha, the innovative mobile answers service from the US, has launched ChaCha 1:1, a mobile marketing service, with Coca-Cola as one of their launch brand partners. more»

The advertising world continues to pay attention to the iPhone, which is beginning to represent a significant share of mobile web page views. JumpTap and Pinch Media will combine efforts to allow advertisers to place ads in iPhone applications. more»

Getting something for free is always attractive for consumers, and it is the driver behind many of the ad-funded models we’re seeing these days.

One of the first mobile companies to give away free services in return for watching ads was Virgin Mobile US, with their SugarMama program. The youthful demographic of Virgin Mobile was the perfect group to offer free airtime in return for their subscribers’ attention.

We had a chance for an in-depth discussion with Scott Kelliher, Director of Mobile Advertising at Virgin Mobile US. Scott explained the details of the service, what works the best, and how customers feel about it. more»

One of the big drivers for mobile advertising will be ad-funded content and services that satisfy the desire for consumers to get something “for free”. This thought provoking brief from Universal McCann takes a look at the “Free World” phenomena and some of the implications for the future of advertising and marketing. more»

In a clear recognition that mobile is not limited to only teenagers (who are too young to vote), the Obama campaign has launched a mobile site to help the candidate connect with US voters. more»

Bango and Millenial Media have announced a partnership that will allow mobile advertisers to better understand the traffic that is being exposed to their ads, and so optimize for better performance. more»

Mobile Commerce is a logical next step from mobile advertising and marketing, and may well fund an explosive growth in mobile activity. The GS 1 group has authored a very interesting paper which takes a wide view of mobile commerce, looking at the applications, the technologies, and some of the key players in the business. more»

Using mobile to communicate with Interactive TV shows has been a big business for quite some time. Now brands can participate in the conversation thanks to SingleBrand, a new system from SinglePoint. more»