Nielsen: Top Mobile Ad Networks

Nielsen as shared that the top five mobile ad networks as far as potential monthly reach are:

1. Millennial Media - 45.6 million monthly unique visitors
2. AOL/Platform-A’s Third Screen Media - 28.6 million unique visitors
3. AdMob - 25.7 million unique visitors
4. Microsoft's MSN Ad Network - 25.4 million unique visitors
5. Jumptap - 23.4 million unique visitors

All of these ad networks claim to have more than 40 percent potential reach of the 55.3 monthly unique mobile web visitors reported by Nielsen for June.

Quattro Wireless and Mojiva were also named as major players.

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News Over Wireless partners with multiple of the top ad networks to ensure that partners receive the highest fill rate possible.

McDonald's Turns to Mobile Marketing

McDonald’s is using mobile to target Hispanics for its McCafe Mocha promotion. Banner ads and SMS are being used to connect with users.

Millennial Media is supporting the campaign by running banner ads directing users to a landing page where they can sign up for SMS reminders about the free McCafe Mochas and local events.

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AT&T Wi-Fi connects with customers

AT&T reports that it saw 15 million Wi-Fi connections during the second quarter 2009 and 26 million in the first half of 2009. That compares to 20 million connections across all of 2008.

In an interesting finding, AT&T said 49 percent of the connections were made by integrated devices or smartphones, a 41 percent increase over the first quarter 2009. This coincides with a new automatic Wi-Fi authentication for iPhone 3.0 devices in June, which tripled Wi-Fi connections.

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Sprint to buy Virgin Mobile USA

Sprint Nextel said Tuesday it would buy out Virgin Mobile USA in a deal that values the small wireless carrier at $483 million and pushes Sprint deeper into the low-end prepaid mobile market.

Sprint, which already owns 13.1 percent of Virgin Mobile, will pay a mix of shares and cash to buy the rest of the company from Richard Branson's Virgin Group, South Korea's SK Telecom and public shareholders.

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Verizon jumps on app store train

Verizon Wireless on Tuesday officially announced plans for its VCast Application Store, a venture that executives painted as complementary to existing app store offerings.

The app store will launch in the fourth quarter, and developers will take home 70 percent of their revenue. At this point, Verizon will not charge for certification and testing of submitted apps, and is promising a 14-day turnaround time, John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Verizon, said during the company's developer conference in San Jose, Calif.

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One-fifth of Americans accessing mobile web each day

Pew Research Center has issued a new study revealing 19 percent of Americans access the mobile web each day, up from 11 percent in December 2007. The study also shows 32 percent have used a mobile device to access the Internet for e-mail, instant messaging or information seeking, a 33 percent increase over late 2007.

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IAB's Mobile Buyers Guide

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has published a Mobile Buyers Guide that has some great info on how to get your clients to buy mobile ads. The guide includes:

>Recommended planning process
>Overview of the U.S. mobile marketplace
>Inventory types
>Advertising on mobile web (how to get started and info on mobile landing pages)