Mads, which delivers targeted mobile advertising campaigns, has partnered with AdMob to help grow the mobile advertising market.

Through this partnership, AdMob will offer Mads European network of premium publishers and carriers the ability to monetize their inventory via mobile advertising.

"We expect that a large part of our premium publisher and operator network partners to monetize their unsold inventory via the AdMob marketplace," said Ashu Mathura, founder/CEO of Mads, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "AdMob and Mads are doing for mobile what DoubleClick/Google are doing for the Web.

"All we need now to make the picture complete is a good partnership with a mobile search company," he said.

The Mads Ad Server platform lets publishers and carriers directly source their inventory from media agencies and ad sales partners and optimize campaigns across a variety of mobile channels.

The partnership with AdMob now gives Mads' clients the ability to integrate ads directly from the AdMob marketplace.

Mads ad-enabled carriers include KPN Netherlands and Vodafone operators in the Netherlands,
Romania, Hungary, New Zealand and Greece

The Vodafone partnerships with Mads are interesting given the fact that in August 2008, Vodafone, along with Telefonica, Sequoia Capital, Cisco, Motorola, Accel Partners and Globespan Capital Partners, participated in a $22 million series C round investment in Amobee, a direct competitor of Mads.

Given the above, there is speculation that Vodafone is perhaps looking to launch their own mobile ad network, as Nokia and Sprint have done.

Carriers are feeling the effects of the economic global recession, even as mobile advertising continues to grow.

Could Vodafone be laying the groundwork for their own network as another revenue channel?

There is a massive mobile-Web convergence underway and many believe that mobile advertising is poised for explosive growth, particularly because of the targeting capabilities, which Mads claims have the ability to produce CTRs up to ten times higher than traditional online advertising.

These include location-based mobile targeting possibilities, which stand to increase revenue streams from mobile advertising when used properly and responsibly.

Cultivating the mobile advertising ecosystem
AdMob is a mobile advertising marketplace, serving more than 4.6 billion targeted mobile banner and text ads -- both on the mobile Web and in applications -- per month.

Incorporated in April 2006, AdMob helps advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile Web and enables publishers to monetize their mobile sites in more than 160 countries.

Mads claims that its average CTR is significantly higher than the average 4 percent typically seen for mobile advertising campaigns - up to 10 percent in some cases.

Europe's largest new media publishers, including Gazzetta dello Sport (Italy), Telegraaf Media Group (Netherlands), TV4 (Sweden) and Aftenposen (Norway), are using the Mads mobile advertising network to reach over 60 million European mobile consumers and monetize their traffic using a single, cross-country campaign order in the Mads campaign manager.

Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, Peugot, Mini, H&M, British Airways, Nivea, EA Games, Coca-Cola, M&Ms, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Mastercard are some of the global brands currently using Mads technology to reach mobile consumers.

Swedish clothing company H&M launched a mobile marketing campaign on its home turf to promote its latest collection with ad agency Mobiento and Mads' technology platform (see story).

More than 15 different demographic targeting options available, including age, gender, ZIP code, region, handset, carrier and country.

Mads powers the full mobile advertising value chain, enabling carriers, publishers and advertisers to deliver targeted campaigns to mobile consumers.

The Mads product suite includes One for Operators, to create, manage and monetize mobile inventory; One for Agencies, to plan, book and optimize campaigns; and One for Advertisers, to track real�time campaign performance analytics and reports.

Mads One is designed to unlock new revenue streams for carriers and publishers across all mobile channels, including mobile Internet, SMS and MMS push/insert, mobile video, mobile games and applications, idle screen and ringback tones.

Mads enables advertisers to deploy interactive, targeted mobile ads to consumers.

Mads currently processes more than 300 million ad requests per month in Europe, and is the mobile advertising platform for more than 150 carriers and publishers across 15 countries.

"The Mads network of operators and premium publishers currently generates over 300 million ad requests per month in Europe alone," Mr. Mathura said. "This inventory can now be sold into the AdMob marketplace.

"This is a landmark for Mads, as we are forging a unique partnership marrying Mads premier ad technology platform with the world's leading mobile advertising marketplace," he said.