Google announced a couple of new targeting options for mobile advertisers today: WiFi targeting, and targeting by mobile operating system version. “To reach users when you know they’ll have a high speed connection, you’ll now be able to target your …

Google has announced a new conversion tracking metric for AdWords: reporting for calls placed from mobile pages. As mobile usage skyrockets, and smartphone use in particular, this should be an increasingly important metric to track for many businesses. “Mobile advertising …

Google’s mobile display ads are getting +1 buttons, according to a post to the Google Mobile Ads blog, which came through the RSS feeds, but is not live on the actual blog. The button will appear on the left side …

Which platform dominates your state? For me, it’s iOS. But for most of my relatives it would be Android. Mobile advertising company Jumptap has released their Mobile STAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) report for July. The report discusses mobile …

Millennial Media has released its latest monthly SMART report, looking at the mobile advertising landscape. The report looks at the top verticals (six of which had triple digit growth YoY).

The feature is available on Google Maps for Mobile versions 4.4 and above on Android devices. 

Google is talking about how the click-to-call ads it introduced earlier this year are reducing acquisition costs for advertisers.  The company points to a case study from Esurance.

Google has announced a new location extensions ad format with map features. Businesses can feature their locations and phone numbers on an expandable map ad that can appear on mobile sites and apps in the Google Display Network.

This format shows up as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show the business location on a Google map, including ad creative, a click-to-call phone number and an option to get directions.

A new report from Appssavvy claims that "virtual goods may be bringing the largest disruption entertainment, communication and e-commerce infrastructure companies have seen for a long time." The company’s research found that leveraging social activity around virtual goods has been successful in building brand awareness, influencing positive opinion about products, and even driving purchase intent.

Millennial Media has released its latest S.M.A.R.T. (U.S. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting) report on how the mobile web is increasing. This includes more users, longer sessions, advertisers targeting more campaigns, etc.

The report also indicates a significant increase in advertisers’ spend on rich media, and an increase in campaigns sending consumers to social media sites.

Google has made its click-to-call ad format for mobile apps and mobile website content available for all AdWords advertisers. The feature was demonstrated at Google I/O in May.

AdMob, which was recently acquired by Google, has announced the launch of its iPad App SDK (software developer kit). A representative for the company tells WebProNews, "AdMob was one of the first companies to launch ad units for both iPhone and Android applications, and now it is driving innovation on the iPad and helping developers start monetizing their iPad applications."

Google said today it has officially completed its acquisition of AdMob.

The Google Blog offers more details about the AdMob acquisition. "It’s clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients’ and partners’ strategies and with this acquisition, it’s now a central part of our own business."

Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media has put out a report mobile devices and their impact on advertising. "For the past year Millennial Media has released a monthly SMART report (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting), which discusses trends in the mobile ad space. Beginning this month, they’ve decided to release an additional device-focused report, the Media Mobile Mix," a representative for the firm tells WebProNews.

This week, among other things, Apple unleashed its new mobile advertising platform called iAd. This is based on the company’s acquisition of the mobile ad platform Quattro earlier this year.

Microsoft has launched full HTML device targeting for advertisers, so that they can easily target mobile display ads to all handsets that can render full HTML sites (including sites developed for the PC Web). Such devices include iPhone, Android, and full HTML browser Windows phones and Blackberry devices.

Google announced that it is now making sure that ads linking to mobile app downloads automatically appear only on devices that actually offer those apps. In addition, the ads will display a "download" link rather than a URL.

Opera announced today that it has acquired mobile advertising firm AdMarvel. Opera says the acquisition will enable it to expand its portfolio of products and services to include "highly scalable ad monetization services" for Opera branded mobile products and services.

Update: The acquisition has been confirmed, and competitor AdMob issued the following statement:

"We believe that Apple’s proposed acquisition of Quattro serves as yet another validation of the vibrant mobile advertising industry and can help accelerate the pace of innovation and competition in this space."

AdMob, which is being purchased by Google, has unveiled a new interactive video ad unit for the iPhone today. Upon the announcement of Google’s acquisition, the highlights of the purchase included SMS, search, web display, and app display ads. Now, video is part of the mix.

• Yahoo announced that Yahoo Sponsored Search ads now appear on iPhones and Android devices. 

If you need any more evidence that mobile advertising is booming, AdMob is getting ready to serve its 100 Billionth ad. The firm notes that this is over 14 times the entire world population (as of 2008), 107 times the distance (in miles) to the sun, and about half to a quarter of the number of stars in the galaxy. Suffice it to say, that’s a lot of mobile advertising. And that’s just from AdMob.