Apple nabs Adobe’s Todd Teresi to head iAd

More than four months after Apple lost iAd boss Andy Miller, the company has finally appointed a replacement.

Todd Teresi, formerly a vice president of Media Solutions at Adobe, is now steering Apple’s mobile ad ship, Bloomberg reports. More specifically, Teresi will serve as vice president of iAd and report to VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue, according to GigaOm.

The news is a glimmer of hope for iAd, which has had trouble finding clients … Continue Reading

Call Genie acquires VoodooVox to create smarter mobile ads

Mobile search and advertising company Call Genie announced Wednesday it has begun the process of acquiring VoodooVox, a company that provides demographic information for phone numbers and mobile ads.

The deal, which Canadian Business reports is worth $2.8 million, will allow Call Genie to expand its mobile advertising services. Using information from VoodooVox’s Analytics product, Call Genie plans to pursue pay-per-call advertising. Pay-per-call advertising is similar to pay per click; a unique phone number is … Continue Reading

InMobi raises massive $200M to overtake Google in mobile ads (video)

InMobi, the four-year-old company that is second place globally in mobile advertising, has raised an astonishingly large $200 million round of funding from Softbank Corp.

The company’s goal is overtake Google as the world leader in the category.

InMobi, which is based in Bangalore and San Francisco, has only 350 employees, but its growth has been frenetic. Its mobile advertisements reached 332 million unique phone users in August, up from just 1.5 million uniques in … Continue Reading

Apple’s iAd head (and Quattro co-founder) Andy Miller jumps ship

In yet another blow to Apple’s iAd mobile advertising platform, the group is losing iAd boss Andy Miller, All Things Digital reports.

Miller, who co-founded mobile ad company Quattro Wireless, which Apple bought for $275 million in 2010, is leaving Apple to become a general partner at Boston-based Highland Capital. His departure is yet another sign that Apple is struggling to morph into an advertising company. It was recently reported that Apple has lowered its … Continue Reading

Greystripe partners with MNI for local mobile ads

Mobile ad startup Greystripe just announced that it has signed a deal with Media Networks, Inc. that will bring local advertising into the Greystripe ad network for the first time.

Director of marketing Dane Holewinski said that until now, Greystripe has focused on national ad campaigns for large brands. Now, the San Francisco startup wants to start tapping into the growing market for local, mobile ads. It points to a study from BIA Kelsey predicting … Continue Reading

Mobile ad optimizer Smaato caps year of rapid growth with new funding

Smaato, a company that helps mobile publishers find the most lucrative ads across multiple networks, just raised $7 million as it prepares to expand its efforts in Southeast Asia.

When I last spoke to Smaato at the end of 2009, the company was crowing about how it had grown from serving 100 to 1,000 publishers in a year. Now cofounder and chief marketing officer Harald Neidhardt said the company has grown by yet another order … Continue Reading

Mobile ad network Moolah Media says it’s all about performance

Apple made a big splash this year with its iAd network for high-quality ads from big brands, but new mobile ad network Moolah Media says it’s already successful by aiming for advertisers who aren’t quite as high-end.

The San Francisco startup is coming out of stealth mode today, but its services have been up-and-running for a month. Chief executive Shawn Scheuer said Moolah Media has already served more than 100 million impressions and generated more … Continue Reading

Video ad startup YuMe goes mobile

YuMe, a well-funded video advertising startup, announced today that it’s bringing its technology to the mobile world.

Specifically, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company said it’s releasing two new mobile ad units, Mobile Connect and Mobile Billboard, as well as software development kits that will allow the creators of iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch apps to integrate YuMe’s ACE for Publishers ad platform. The ads can run as full-screen video, and they include buttons that can … Continue Reading

AdMob's Omar Hamoui leaves Google for "personal reasons"

Updated

Omar Hamoui, founder and chief executive of Google-acquired mobile ad startup AdMob, is leaving the search giant for what the company says are personal reasons.

Only five months have passed since the acquisition finally closed, which means Hamoui spent more time (about six months) waiting for the government to approve the deal than he did at Google. Following the acquisition, Hamoui was named Google’s vice president of mobile ads.

We’ve heard that Hamoui was … Continue Reading

Placecast and O2 bring location-based ads to 1M UK residents

Location-based advertising doesn’t seem to have reached a mass audience yet, but things may be changing. San Francisco startup Placecast just announced a deal that should bring its location-based ads to 1 million new users.

Placecast is partnering with O2 (owned by Telefonica) to deliver ads on the mobile carrier’s O2 More service in the United Kingdom. Previously, O2 More delivered offers based on customers’ age, gender, and interests to more than 1 million subscribers. … Continue Reading

Google making $1 billion a year from mobile

Google executives tried to fend off concerns this afternoon that they’re still making all their money from cheap text ads running alongside the company’s search results and on its AdSense network. So during the conference call discussing third quarter earnings, they presented some numbers about Google’s “emerging” businesses. Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette emphasized that executives are only sharing these numbers once, to make a point about Google’s revenue sources.

Here’s the data they shared:… Continue Reading

Opera gets into the ad business with its Open Mobile Ad Exchange

Web browser maker Opera Software announced today that it is officially getting into the advertising business with the launch of its Open Mobile Ad Exchange.

The service brings cloud-based ads to feature phones and smartphones via the Opera Mini web browser, which has some 66.5 million users worldwide. It will offer publishers a way to maximize their revenue from Opera apps and mobile websites, advertisers will be able to take advantage of real-time analytics and … Continue Reading

Flash app platform Sprout reinvents itself as AdVine ad platform

Sprout, a San Francisco startup that first launched as a platform for building Flash applications, has been refocusing its technology on ad-creation. In case the shift wasn’t clear, Sprout signaled the new focus today by relaunching its flagship product under the name AdVine.

One of AdVine’s big attractions is the fact that it creates ads that can display both the Flash or HTML5 formats. Those ads will use Flash on Web browsers, then they’ll play … Continue Reading

Motorola snags Aloqa to put location-aware mobile content in plain sight

Motorola has acquired location-based service search developer and darling of MobileBeat 2009 Aloqa for an undisclosed chunk of change to enhance its factory-shipped MOTOBLUR phone user interface with location-based push content.

The technology will allow Motorola phones to push content — such as App data or even advertising — to users wherever they happen to be walking or driving at the time.

Motorola has been on a bit of a shopping trip lately, picking up … Continue Reading

Greystripe’s mobile ads break free from their app prison

As the mobile advertising industry grows, most of the attention has focused on advertising inside applications, not on mobile websites. Since the iPhone’s enormous app ecosystem is one of its main draws, it’s no surprise that Apple’s iAd effort is all about apps, but other ad networks have taken a similar route. Mobile ad startup Greystripe was all about apps, until today.

Now, the San Francisco startup is launching a new feature called RevMax for … Continue Reading

How lucrative are iPhone ads? MobilityWare made $300K in June

There has been some debate about whether developers can make serious cash from the advertising in their iPhone applications. In fact, Steve Jobs suggested that Apple created its iAd program as a way to address the lack of lucrative, high-quality ad programs.

However, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad developer MobilityWare said it’s doing just fine with startup Greystripe‘s mobile ad network. Specifically, the company said that in June, it made $298,308 across its 17 applications, … Continue Reading

Apple closes down Quattro advertising network

Updated with comment from other ad networks

Quattro Wireless, the ad network acquired by Apple earlier this year, announced today that it’s winding down its existence as an independent network to focus on Apple’s iAd program.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has said he doesn’t see advertising as a big moneymaker for Apple on its own, but rather as a way to support the iPhone and iPad:

We want to help our developers make some … Continue Reading

Google launches mobile banner ads which know where you are

Google today announced on its Mobile Ads blog that it has launched location-aware display advertisements for mobile phones. Through Google’s “location extension” feature, advertisers can now include their location and phone numbers to appear in display ads on iPhone and Android mobile websites.

The feature, previously available only on search ads, will appear as banner text advertising and will pinpoint business locations on a small map as well as a “click-to-call” phone number. Consumers will … Continue Reading

Survey: Even with smartphones, texting still rules mobile advertising

Are you a hip location-based service looking to make money by selling ads for retailers on your übersnazzy iPhone app, which all the cool kids are using? Take another look at your business model. Chances are the good old SMS text message is still beating your app in reaching the pundits with ads.

According to a recent study commissioned by digital advertising company Placecast (carried out by research firm Harris Interactive) users still consider texting … Continue Reading