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Mobile ad optimization firm Smaato has released a new version of its iSOMA SDK (Software Development Kit) for iPad applications and mobile websites.

The iSOMA for iPad SDK will support multiple new ad formats, including the Internet Advertising Bureaus Universal Ad Package (UAP). The SDK also supports the Mobile Marketing Associations mobile ad formats, including new, rich media banner formats that are emerging from Smaatos 36 ad network partners.

There is a lot of excitement in the mobile publishing market about the iPad and new features in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 release, says Smaato CEO & Co-Founder. Ragnar Kruse. We are happy to continue our support for the iPhone platform and the iPad as the new addition to mobile device choices.

Apples iPad is a hybrid mobile device that is expected to be heavily used to surf the web, access media application, and play with mobile entertainment offerings. First applications and media offerings from publishers of TIME, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are using a blend of new innovative advertising formats that add multimedia functions, like video and sound.

Smaato Advanced Mobile Analytics will be included in the iPad SDK 1.0. This provides a comprehensive set of tools that enable mobile publishers to optimize their inventory for the iPad to maximize user experience and insights. Smaato will make the new iSOMA for iPad version available for free download with registration on the sign-up portal.

Smaato notes that better options for iSOMA mobile advertising functions are now available with the multitasking and background functions in the new tentpoles of the iPhone 4.0 OS. This will make easier interaction available for cross-platform, mobile-branded landing pages, because the user flow while in an app is not disconnected the app can stay open in the background. This will allow similar mobile advertising features to those offered by Apples iAd mobile advertising platform unveiled yesterday.

Deadline: August 20, 2010
Award Reception: CTIA San Francisco, October 2010

The Smaato Mobile Advertising Award is a search for the coolest ad-enabled mobile website, mobile application and mobile campaign.

Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2010

The Smaato Award is searching for outstanding mobile applications and mobile websites and passionate mobile entrepreneurs that lead this new medium with their content offerings. From Smaato’s own experience in the early days of a start-up with a promising new product, there are things that help publishers grow: buzz, connections and media attention … oh and yes: a meeting with a venture capital firm. For the first time in 2010 Smaato is also searching for the best mobile campaign.

The Smaato Award tries to help with all of the above. We have assembled an outstanding jury of mobile influencers and media czars. As a finalist you will be sure, that all of the jury members have seen your offering. Our media partners will help promote the award and especially the winning companies to get some buzz around your entry – if you are one of the lucky winners. Maybe if they like you even more, there is a chance for further media attention and interviews or portraits of your company.

Barcelona! Yes – the world championship of mobile events and conferences: Mobile World Congress 2011. The mother ship and hotbed of the mobile economy and the biggest global market place when it comes to making new business and media contacts. The winners take it all! The winner will join the Smaato booth in Hall 7 (App Planet) for free! Additional prizes are: a booth at M-Days in Munich, Germany in January 2011, a booth at M-Publishing in New York in November 2010, handsets, free tickets for Mobile World Congress and many more.

Oh, and before we forget – there is an even bigger carrot out there: We will arrange for the winners to meet with at least four VC partners of investors in mobile media. If you are still looking for funding or feedback from the venture community, we think this is a pretty cool networking opportunity.

What are the prizes?

• MWC Barcelona, Spain: free booth participation (incl. 2 passes)
• Booth at M-Days 2011, a leading mobile event & conference in Germany
• Booth at M-Publishing in November 2010 in New York
• Meetings with at least four partner level VC’s
• Additional prizes like handsets – will be announced later

What are the categories?

• iPhone
• Android
• Windows Phone
• Samsung Bada
• Symbian
• RIM
• Mobile Website
• Branded Games and Apps
• Mobile Campaign

The Smaato Award Jury is looking for mobile publishers and developers with an outstanding mobile ad- enabled solution either in-app or mobile web app/widget. And we are looking for agencies and brands to submit the best mobile campaign.

Who is in the Jury?

The Smaato Award 2010 features a world-class jury of leading influencers in the mobile community:

Andy Favell (mobiThinking), Bena Roberts (GoMoNews), Carlo Longino (WIP Mobile Jam), David Murphy (Mobile Marketing), Derek Kerton (Kerton Group), Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb), Giselle Tsirulnik (Mobile Marketer), Heike Scholz (Mobile Zeitgeist), James Cameron (Camerjam), Jim Cook (MobiAdNews), Kei Shimada (Infinita, JP), Lubna Dajani (Mobile Monday, NYC), Mark Wächter (Mobile Monday, Germany & MMA), Matthäus Krzykowski (Venture Beat), Matthew Snyder (ADObjects), Michelle Sklar (bnetTV), Peggy Anne Salz (MSearchGroove), Ragnar Kruse (Smaato), Rudy De Waele (dotOpen/mTrends), Tim Green (Mobile Entertainment), Tomi Ahonen (Author).

A short bio, photo and website link is provided for each jury member at www.smaato.com/award. Contact information for the jury can be obtained at award@smaato.com

How can publishers and developers join the competition?

The jury will look at: Unique approach, traction in the market, management team, idea, originality and branding to name a few… Participants provide a short description of their website/application/game and their company. They can upload up to three PDF pages of screenshots and supporting materials for further explanation.

Submission URL: www.smaato.com/award

Are there any entry fees?

No, entry to the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award is completely free!

Who is Smaato?

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators. More than 5,000 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 220+ countries and Smaato is managing 7+ billion ad requests per month.

Any firm that claims leadership in one sector of the mobile industry or other would do well to follow Smaato’s example, with the advertising network hosting an industry roundtable in the same week it announces it now serves over 7 billion ad requests a month.

The milestone comes a month after the number of publishers registered on the network topped 5,000, with Smaato claiming more than 40 ad networks are now connected to its open mobile advertising platform SOMA.

Penny for your thoughts

It’s a good a time as ever, therefore, to take a litmus test on just where other leading figures see the industry going.

On that score, Smaato recently hosted a roundtable discussion in Berlin to look at what the biggest trends in mobile are, and where those with a vested interest in its development see it going next.

In attendance were Fishlabs founder and CEO Michael Schade, FriendTicker co-founder Martin Pischke and head of product innovation at Deutsche Telekom Fee Beyer, with ten contributors in all discussing everything from location-based service apps to mobile advertising.

All hail iPhone

According to ad agency iconmobile’s COO Michael von Roeder, it’s iPhone that has proved the catalyst when it comes to marketing on mobiles.

“Probably the most visible game changers for mobile advertising are devices like the iPhone which make mobile Internet a mass market and which enable completely new business models,” he said,

“I feel that non-mobile brands – or brands that are not in the core industry – are now moving into this space.”

A Foursquare shaped future

The general concensus at the roundtable appears to be that iPhone has made mobile gaming mainstream, which then allows apps that rely on mass participation to thrive.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of action when it comes to location,” added Beyer.

“Facebook is launching quite soon a location component. There are services like Foursquare which now has more than 1 million users.

“So I really think location will become a commodity on the one hand, and that also again brings up privacy discussion. We have to get used to the idea of being public online, but the need for privacy is still there and unsolved.”

Smaato, the all-rounder

Smaato itself believes polling such views is an important part of staying ahead of the game, with CEO and co-founder Ragnar Kruse claiming the firm cherry picked the top thought leaders in the industry for the event.

“As a company we can only grow by listening to the market place and understanding the current issues and trends. Collaboration in this industry is key and at Smaato, we are working hard to collaborate on a global scale to help others succeed,” Kruse added.

Smaato has launced its SOMA SDK (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising Software Development Kit) for the Android and iPhone, which aims to give developers access to 35 mobile ad netwroks worldwide to serve and display ads within application and mobile sites on Android and iPhone handsets.

As Smaato’s Metric indicates that Android devices have very promising click through rates, Android smartphones have a great chance of providing publishers with valuable revenue through mobile advertising. Smaato is on its way to help publishers maximise their mobile monetization efforts with easy tools, SDKs and sophisticated reporting in one dashboard overview with its SOMA platform. According to company officials the SDKs will come with free analytics and a new reporting dashboard to visualize usage data and keep track of advertising revenues

A new partner for the SOMA platform was recently announced. New York based Adsmobi is the 35th ad network partner and will use the already available Smaato services in the industry. However Smaato has yet to launch new features that will be made available in future SOMA platform releases which will include more targeting data, better forecasting tools and media buying features to further enchance the value for ad networks partners worldwide.

Software Development Kit has been a major factor in determining the success of a particular mobile advertising campaign. For instance, the pioneer mobile advertising network, AdMob which has recently came up with the latest SDK for iPhone OS and iPad. Other example will be MobGold, which has also launched their platform for Google’s Android and iPhone. Though the development of Software Development Kits for MobGold and Smaato are not as advanced as AdMob, but there are rooms for improvements for these rising mobile advertising networks.Furthermore, with the recent lauching of a powerful cross ad network platform from MobGold, the sky is the limit for these mobile advertising networks.

Mobile advertising network InMobi has come a long way since we first covered them in April 2008 (they were then called mKhoj). Today they are probably the second biggest mobile advertising network in the world, with nearly 17 billion monthly impressions combined on mobile apps and mobile websites. Google’s AdMob has 18 billion impressions/month).

Most of InMobi’s ad impressions are outside of the U.S. The bulk – 10 billion – are in Asia where the company first launched. 2 billion are in the U.S., where the company has had limited operations since January 2010. Africa takes 2.3 billion, Europe 1.6 billion and the Middle East .5 billion. A full U.S. launch took place last week, and a Japan launch is coming soon.

How well will InMobi do in the U.S.? They were bullish before the recent news about Apple taking steps to make it nearly impossible for non-independent advertising networks like AdMob to work on the the iPhone and iPad.

Now, with the market in disarray and the FTC looking into the situation they think they can grab a lot of market share really fast. That’s because they’re hitting the ground running with a self serve platform and a human sales team. Apple’s own iAds is actually going to have to catch up to InMobi in some respects.

InMobi isn’t just some random Asian focused ad network. They’re backed in part by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures and revenues, we’ve heard, are in the $35 million range already. The company is targeting $75 million in 2010, say our sources.

Leena Rao rightly points out that while the new rules, if they stand, both help and hurt independent ad networks. They can grab market share but they probably can’t get acquired, for example. But InMobi doesn’t seem too concerned. Who knows how long Apple can keep these rules in place. And there are lots of other mobile platforms out there, particularly the exploding Android ecosystem. And while chaos reigns the smart guys will grab everything they can.

To help prove that inMobi really is a global player, now that it has finally launched into the USA (see our story here), the company has just announced a $2 million World Developer Fund. Those who sign up to this initiative get to keep all the money from their mobile advertising until the fund runs dry. Just get hold of inMobi’s iPhone, iPad, or Android SDKs to benefit.

It’s actually very simple to sign up to inMobi’s fund here,  when all you need to provide besides a name and email address is a URL and the name of your app. You then get to keep all the revenues it creates from mobile advertising until the $2 million runs out.

inMobi is totally insistent that there is no catch to this. The company believes so strongly that mobile app developers will stay with it because of the global scale and financial stabilitywhich  inMobi can provide that it is willing to bet $2 million on it.

According to inMobi there are three good incentives as to why mobile app developers should go with the company. One of them is that it can offer world-class ‘mobile customer discovery’ using its technology combined with a real-time self-learning network.

Secondly, it offers detailed real-time automated reporting and download tracking, so that developers can check how their apps are performing.

And finally it claims to be the world’s largest independent mobile ad network with 16.7 billion impression reaching 179 million consumers in 108 countries.

Quite frankly this looks like a win-win proposition for new apps developers. However, GoMo News wonders if existing inMobi customers will be somewhat cheesed off if they don’t get a slice of this $2 million pie?

InMobi, one of the world’s largest independent mobile ad networks, just announced that plans to enter the U.S. advertising market. The company – which already has offices in San Francisco and has currently served about 2 billion ad impressions in the U.S. following a soft launch in January – is currently one of the strongest mobile advertising players in the Asia Pacific market and also has a strong presence in Africa and Western Europe. In the U.S., InMobi will go up against entrenched players like AdMob, which was recently acquired by Google, and relative newcomers like Apple’s iAd and Quattro Wireless.

InMobi started its business in Asia, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that this is also the strongest region in the company’s portfolio. Looking across the other regions where InMobi is currently active, the company announced that it managed to double its inventory of available impressions from 7.5 billion to 16.7 billion worldwide over the last six months. Looking at InMobi’s current numbers in the U.S., it is worth noting that – without trying too hard – the company currently serves more ads in the U.S. than AdMob did two years ago (though arguably, the mobile advertising market itself has also grown exponentially since then).

InMobi, an international mobile advertising network based in Bangalore, India , has come up with an innovative means to boost its mobile ad market-share in the U.S. while the big players (Google & Apple) are busy battling things out in other areas.

The company today announced a $ 2 million World Developer Fund to encourage application developers to use InMobi for in-app advertising, thus making all developers on the Android, iPhone and iPad platforms eligible for the fund based on a first-come, first-served basis.

InMobi is planning to provide funds for developers who use InMobi’s network to deliver ads within their apps 100 per cent of the advertising revenue. InMobi normally takes 40 per cent of the revenue, but they are waiving this until the $2m fund is used up. Once the fund dries up, the normal 60/40 split will take effect, but not before InMobi likely encourages a huge amount of developers to utilize their platform in hopes they’ll continue once it’s all said and done.

This is indeed an interesting yet a unique approach, and a good way to one-up the competition by giving developers the one thing they’ve always wanted – the use of a third-party in-app mobile advertising platform while keeping 100% of the profits. This critical move also serves as a good inspiration especially for the current growing mobile advertising networks such as MobGold and Smaato.

MobGold, a leading global player in mobile advertising network, since founded in June 2008, has already been in the line of funding. For instance, MobGold had managed to raise $2 Million in Series A funding from Rising Rich Ltd. and $12 Million Led by Fast Global Investments In Series B Financing. From all the funding, MobGold had invested wisely for product development, marketing and market expansion, which leads to its current progress in the mobile advertising arena.

Though MobGold is still in the stage of planning for the upcoming funding which might be open to app developers, MobGold is gaining more and more support. MobGold as an established industry leader that has a proven ability to develop cutting-edge mobile advertisement platform makes the company itself a thriving success.

NEW YORK, NY – May 26, 2010: Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media ad and analytics provider for mobile apps, today announced a partnership with Mojiva to deliver Medialets’ highly engaging in-app rich media ad formats to Mojiva’s network clients. As a Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner, Mojiva can now leverage Medialets’ mobile rich media for campaigns that run across their ad network or through the mOcean Mobile platform.

“Our partnership with Mojiva brings greater scale to the mobile app ad campaigns we enable,” says Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “Together we’re accelerating the growth of mobile rich media by giving advertisers more buyer power and greater access to the most engaging ad formats in mobile today.”

The recently launched Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner program enables leading mobile ad networks, ad mediators and ad servers to sell and support Medialets’ unique cross-platform rich media units. Medialets Enrich™ enables advertisers to run a single set of ad creatives without changes across an exceptionally broad range of mobile properties and provides a unified set of reports from which to measure campaign success.

“We’ve seen great demand from our clients for in-app rich media ads that not only generate higher CPMs, but allow advertisers to build stronger connections with consumers and see maximum return for their media spend,” said Mojiva CEO David Gwozdz. “We are pleased to work with Medialets. Their scale and flexibility help make them a leader in delivering rich media solutions for mobile apps.”

mOcean Mobile is the leading independent mobile ad serving and analytics platform, currently managing billions of ads for mobile websites, ad networks and applications including The Rubicon Project, Polar Mobile, The Star Tribune and News Over Wireless.

Medialets enables brands and agencies to create high-impact ads that take advantage of all of the features and hardware capabilities of iPhone, iPad and Android devices while empowering publishers and ad networks to sell more ad inventory at higher CPMs. Medialets’ unique cross-platform solution enables advertisers to run a single set of ad creatives across an exceptionally broad range of mobile properties and consistently measure performance through a unified set of reports.

mOcean Mobile, a subsidiary company of Mojiva, Inc., and the leading independent mobile ad serving and analytics platform, today announced that Cellufun, one of the world’s largest mobile communities, has selected its MAST platform.

Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mojiva said, “mOcean continues to meet the growing demand among mobile publishers for a more robust platform to help them monetize their ad sales efforts and mediate among various 3rd party ad networks. We are pleased that Cellufun, the 3rd largest mobile publisher, serving more than 600 million ad impressions a month, chose mOcean Mobile. mOcean’s MAST platform is rapidly finding itself as the leading choice for not only large mobile publishers, but for mobile ad networks as well. Based on how simple we’ve made a complex technology, mOcean Mobile is now powering more ad networks globally than any other platform by a huge margin.”

Neil Edwards, CEO of Cellufun said, “Cellufun’s mobile offering and marketing solutions are unique. We have a diverse user base, and can target users that match any brand’s audience. Ad serving, mediation and enabling self-service advertisers are mission critical to our success and MAST will be an important component of our strategy across these fronts.”

Cellufun is one of the world’s largest mobile communities where people socialize, play games, and buy virtual goods for self expression, gifting, and for competitive advantage. People around the globe access the Cellufun platform on any mobile network, on any phone, and in over ten languages. New York-based Cellufun partners with global brands and media companies such asAOL ( News – Alert) and Gannet to deliver branded entertainment and custom-designed mobile marketing solutions. With over 600 million monthly page views, Cellufun offers a unique brand-building opportunity for media, marketers and agencies seeking to broaden their reach to the ever-present “third screen.”

Mojiva is a mobile advertising company that owns and operates the fastest growing mobile advertising network, currently reaching more than 140 million global unique users monthly through mobile web and app display advertising (36 million in the US). mOcean Mobile, a subsidiary company of Mojiva, Inc., is the leading independent mobile ad serving and analytics platform, currently managing over 6 billion ad requests for mobile websites, ad networks and applications. Clients and partners include The Rubicon Project, Polar Mobile, The Star Tribune and News Over Wireless.

Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media ad and analytics provider for mobile apps, recently announced a partnership with Mojiva to deliver Medialets’ highly engaging in-app rich media ad formats to Mojiva’s network clients. As a Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner, Mojiva can now leverage Medialets’ mobile rich media for campaigns that run across their ad network or through the mOcean Mobile platform.

Through the partnership of Mojiva with Medialets, we can foresee that there will be an acceleration of the growth of mobile rich media. The collaboration between Mojiva and Medialets is giving advertisers more buyer power and greater access to the most engaging ad formats in mobile today.

It has been a norm that great demand from clients for in-app rich media ads does not only generate higher CPMs, but at the same time this phemomenon also allows advertisers to build stronger connections with consumers and see maximum return for their media spend. And it does not limited only to Mojiva, we can see that other mobile advertising networks such as MobGold is also taking this opportunity seriously.

Working towards a direction which aims to provide the best-user experience, MobGold is currently putting their effort in searching for the appropriate partners to develop more useful technologies to be used in different mobile advertising campaigns. The latest upadates of MobGold will be the launching of its SMS and Mobile Email Advertising, with the sole objective of providing greater diversity of mobile advertising channels to advertising agencies and telecommunication companies.

The SMS and Mobile Email Advertising will help advertisers in studying the consumers behavior from their mobile activities and responses to the marketing messages that they received so advertisers could tap its potential to not only push information to consumers, but to spark a feedback from them.

Publishers like Google, Facebook, CNN, Fox, and most television networks are all started sending out mobile content that users are asking for. The diversity of the mobile content available leads to an equally diverse audience. The scale and flexibility help make MobGold one of the sparkling global leaders in mobile advertising arena.

We had a pretty good idea what Google and its AdMob division would think of Apple’s new rules on outside advertising companies collecting analytics, but AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui has now spelled it out himself. In a post on the company’s blog today, Hamoui says flat out that if the changes are enforced as written, they would “prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google’s advertising solutions on the iPhone.” That, he says, would “not [be] in the best interests of users or developers,” noting that “in the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome,” and that “artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.” As for what Google and AdMob are going to do about it, Hamoui would only say that they’re going to be “speaking to Apple to express our concerns about the impact of these terms.” We’ve also reached out to Greystripe for comment — which would also seem to be affected by the new rules — but have yet to hear back.

AdMob has been very much in the news over the past few weeks – being acquired by Google, testing new geo-targeted ads, releasing a new SDK to support the iPad, and updating their AdWhirl optimizer.

Taking a look at all these latest activities gives some idea of where this mobile advertising pioneer company is heading.

Google Acquisition

The biggest news of course is that Google’s acquisition of AdMob was finally approved by the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) after the FTC concluded that the deal was unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks. In particular the FTC cited Apple’s acquisition of ad network Quattro and the launch of the iAd as part of the iPhone OS as indicators that the market would remain open and competitive. (see MobiAD article: The Future of iPhone & iAd)

AdMob’s founder and CEO Omar Hamoui commented, “We are excited to get to what’s next and to start working with Google to develop new products and services for our advertisers, developers, and publishers.” (see MobiAD interview with Omar: AdMob – Outpacing the Competition and the MobiAD interview with Russell Buckley, VP of Global Alliances at AdMob.)

In general, reaction to the decision was positive – people believe that given the rapidly evolving nature of the industry, an AdMob/Google combination won’t adversely limit competition. Plus, there is definitely the feeling that it is great to see a mobile advertising startup have such a financially successful exit.

As Justin Siegel, CEO of Boston-based mobile social network Mocospace said: “I think the FTC made the right decision here. It’s a good outcome for Google, Admob, and the mobile advertising industry.”

Fresh off the closure of its acquisition by Google, mobile ad network AdMob is officially launching an iPad-specific SDK to allow app developers and publishers to download and install the network’s ads within their apps. The SDK was previously in beta but is now available to the general public.

The new SDK from Admob is unified across all devices running the iPhone OS. App developers and ad publishers can download one binary for development across all Apple iPhone OS devices, for example, the iPhone, iPod touch and the latest iPad. The new SDK supports two ad formats in native iPad applications: text & tile ads and image ads. Both of these ad formats are available in the three IAB standard ad sizes: 300×250, 728×90, and 468×60.

The new text & tile ad formats contain the same 35 characters as our standard CPC text ads and are easy to create directly in the AdMob interface. Where the image ads will become broadly available starting next week. Advertisers who are using image ads are encouraged to provide all three ad sizes to maximize the reach of their campaign. Admob is also praising the “creative potential of iPad ads using HTML5,” even building demos of ads using HTML5 technology, which rivals Flash, to show off the innovative formats. AdMob was one of the first companies to launch ad units for both iPhone and Android applications, and now they are on their discovery to drive innovation on the iPad.

Not just AdMob, almost everyone else is excited about the potential of iPad for both advertisers and publishers. Other global leading mobile advertising networks such as MobGold, InMobi and Smaato, are yet to launch their mobile advertising platfrom for iPad, but there seems to be a great future in developing the ad units for iPad. Though mobile advertising network MobGold appears to be one of the newest compared to the others, yet MobGold’s effort to launch GoldLink, further reiterates their determination in creeativity to continue to invest in providing best in class monetization and advertising solutions on this platform.

The current iPad network is growing rapidly. Advertisers should note that any ads targeted to the iPhone OS includes the iPad by default and it is also possible to target only iPad devices.

Thanks to an SEC filing, another detail emerged today about Google’s acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob. We already knew the $750 million Google-AdMob acquisition was a cash and stock deal but we didn’t know the breakdown between the two. According to an SEC filing submitted by Google today, the search giant sold $530 million worth of stock as part of the deal, indicating that AdMob (and its investors) may have taken home the remainder, $220 million, in cash (because of some accounting issues, this number may not be exact).

So was AdMob happy with the split between cash and stock? I guess that depends on whether they think Google’s stock will keep going up. Google paid for the bulk of the deal with stock, and the deal will hardly make a dent in its huge cash reserves (the company has $26.5 billion in the bank).

The deal itself was drawn out due to concerns from the FTC over anti-trust issues. Over six months after announcing its plans to acquire AdMob, Google finally closed the deal at the end of May, a week after the FTC unanimously approved the deal.

Apple is under fire from Google after the hardware company changed the language in its iPhone developer’s agreement, prohibiting third-party ad companies from being able to collect usage data from iPhone apps. The issue is that Apple’s change seems to mainly target Google’s AdMob, Apple’s staunchest competitor in the mobile market. Meanwhile, the move helps Apple, which will be able to collect usage data, and potentially gain an upper hand to attract advertisers.

For its part, AdMob isn’t happy with the move. Writing in a recent blog post, AdMob’s Omar Hamoui said that Apple’s move creates “artificial barriers to competition” that could hurt both users and developers that want to be able to turn a profit on their applications. He also believes that Apple’s move could eventually hurt the “technological progress” that should be affecting mobile advertising.

AdMob’s concerns are understandable. After all, the company is now owned by Google, the world’s premier online advertiser, and the company that wants to turn a healthy profit in the mobile space. But that doesn’t mean that Apple is wrong to do what it did. Whether Google likes it or not, Apple is allowed to control what happens on its own platform. And determining how much access developers can have to information is a key component in that.

It’s also worth noting that Google isn’t so innocent in all of this. The company won’t need to worry about Apple’s iAd on its own platform, since Apple’s service will be available exclusively on iOS. On Android, developers have no choice but to play by Google’s rules, even if they’re looser than with its mobile OS rival.

But Google wants to have its cake and eat it too. Not only does it believe that it should dominate Android OS advertising, it also wants to get all the information it needs to effectively compete on the same level as iAd on iOS. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense for Google to want that. At the same time, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to stop it.

Apple has invested boatloads of cash into iAd. Why should the company give its chief competitor, which, if allowed to run free, would totally dominate the mobile-ad business, free rein on its own platform? It’s simply not sound business sense. And Steve Jobs was smart enough to recognize that, even if the government disagrees and decides exclusion is anti-competitive.

Still, maybe it’s time we all realize that Apple is simply making its decision to benefit its own operation. And there’s nothing wrong with that in spirit, if not necessarily in practice.

By Don Reisinger

Mozilla revealed this week that it will introduce a new application for the iPhone called “Firefox Home.”

The app will allow users to gain remote access to their desktop browser data, like browsing history and even the tabs last used in a Firefox session.

“Firefox Home” represents the most sophisticated attempt by Mozilla yet to pacify Firefox fanatics who want to extend their comforts of Mozilla to the iPhone. Moreover, the app also serves up the Firefox “Awesome Bar” capability, which simplifies the process by which individuals can access their favorite websites.

“Firefox Home for iPhone is part of a broader Mozilla effort to provide a more personal web experience with more user control,” says Mozilla Labs product manager Ragavan Srinivasan.

Essentially, the app’s functionality is made possible by Mozilla Sync, which synchronizes data between two desktop browsers via the Sync add-on. By setting up “Firefox Home” on your iPhone, the Sync functionality takes over and provides remote access to the browser data referenced.

Despite the hopes of many Mozilla users, there are no present plans to introduce a native iPhone browser, although a version of Firefox for Android is presently in the works. Firefox Home, however, will work on the iPad, even though it is not optimized to do so.

At the OMMA mobile event yesterday in NYC, mobile agency execs discussed the evolution of the mobile ad space, while offering views on how the channel may evolve in the near future following the introduction of things like HTML5 and Apple’s iAd.

Despite the hype surrounding the mobile app space, mobile agencies suggest new technologies could help “turn marketers’ attention away from the crowded branded app space.”  With surprising “anti-app” sentiment, panelists warned advertisers not to dive into the app space just yet, and instead place emphasis on formulating clear mobile strategies before deciding which channels are best suited.

“Our initial conversations with clients always start with them getting excited about applications,” said Jared Hopfer, marketing manager at mobile agency Mobext. “As an agency we have to calm them down and talk about the types of functionality that an app would offer that other experiences wouldn’t, and weigh the relative benefits.”

Apple’s iAd team is working hard at targeting agencies as well, and it seems to be working.  Patrick Collins, CEO of agency 5th Finger expressed little doubt the iAd network would provide a superior solution to ad formats currently available in mobile marketing arsenals.  ”I think we all know that when iAd is launched we’ll see a lot of very interesting stuff coming through that will really excite brand marketers.”

The debate between mobile apps vs. the mobile Web and Flash vs HTML5 rages on, but it seems the underlying impression from an agency point-of-view is in favor of HTML5 and the mobile Web.

CEO of mobile ad network Millennial Media, said he too believed growth in mobile use was coming from within the browser.  ”We see a lot of ad impressions, and I think the winning platform is HTML5.  It’s going to take three years or so, and there’s no doubt applications are all the rage today, but I think the browser platform will win in the end.”