An article by MediaPost reports on a recent report by comScore in June which identified social networking as the fastest-growing content category across both mobile browsers and applications. This expansion comes as no great surprise, given that there are estimated to be 100 million people worldwide accessing Facebook on mobile devices.

Further data from mobile ad network Millennial Media claims that there has been a 50% rise in mobile ad campaigns that send users to multiple social networking sites in the last six months. Overall, 12% of campaigns direct people to social sites as a call to action within ads, which is a higher proportion than those sending users to mobile commerce sites or store locator maps.

The report says that whilst mobile advertisers are increasingly trying to drive users to brand pages or promotions on social sites, click-to-call remains the most common type of action they encourage in ads at 36%, followed by signing up for a service (29%), submitting a form (28%), application download (24%) and watching a video (23%).

Other data covered by the Millennial report show that the number of ad requests per page view was just over one (1.03) and the average monthly page views per user was 108. The average session time was up by a minute to five minutes.

An opinion piece on the MediaWeek website argues the case that mobile advertising is already becoming a powerful form of marketing, if used with the right strategy. Despite their smaller screens, different operating systems, richer location information and different use cases, compared to PCs, the author says that mobile platforms offer varying degrees of richness and interactivity, with strong marketing results now being achieved across them all.

Mobile marketers can track and measure conversion rates as well as the impact on brand metrics. Similar to PPC advertising, mobile marketers can track the cost to drive a purchase, opt-in, subscription, registration or phone calls so they can quantify their cost per acquisition. No big surprises here and these metrics are essential to gauge how a mobile campaign works, but the use of mobile marketing requires a particular strategy to target the type of users and business services that will get the best results.

On a similar subject, a blog on the MediaPost website also discusses the growth of online advertising and the role of mobile Internet devices which are helping to speed up the changes in advertising and measurement. The argument is that this growth will enable target marketing, interactive research, social referrals, hyper local discounts and secure quicker commercial transactions.

However, advertisers in the US spend only 8% of their dollars on the Internet, whereas consumers spend about 38% of their media time there, meaning that opportunities are currently being wasted by advertisers not targeting new media's unique real-time opportunities to build awareness, loyalty, referrals, purchases and repeat business. That means using a combination of online, social network and Internet mobile devices to make advertising relevant, and therefore, more valuable to individuals.

A recent article from Advertising Age's blog looks at some key trends that are predicted for the mobile advertising market in 2010. The underlying theme is how mobile technology is rapidly changing lifestyle and business behaviour, with the future trends for the next decade being hard to predict as the market is developing quickly with new functionality and opportunities for advertisers.

The five main trends covered here are: the opportunities becoming available for local advertisers to target their market; the growth in mobile shopping applications and point-of-sale technology; the role of branded applications and display advertising opportunities; the linkage between mobiles and outdoor advertising for targeting; and the importance of social networking and crowdsourcing from mobiles to influence market activity.

Extensive news coverage has been given to the launch of the new Google Nexus One phone (such as this BBC report). This is the company's first own-brand smartphone, although it has been providing the Google Android operating system through other phones to date. The new Nexus One phone is designed to compete with the Apple iPhone and has been developed with Taiwanese manufacturer HTC using the Android operating system.

The phone is initially available in the US and is being sold directly from Google's website. It can be purchased 'unlocked' so that any chosen mobile carrier can be used, but clearly Google wants to gain a bigger share of the mobile phone market to capture more mobile search activity and to provide another advertising platform as a revenue stream in this growing market. An article by ComputerWorld takes a make detailed look at Google's likely strategy to develop a greater foothold in this market.

The latest market share figures reported from Gartner indicate that the Android operating system has about a 3.5% share of the global smartphone market, in comparison to Nokia, which has a 39% share and Apple with 17%.

As reported widely in the press, Google has acquired a US mobile display advertising company, AdMob, for US$750m. According to Search Engine Land, the acquisition gives Google access to AdMob's 15,000-plus mobile websites and applications which will complement Google's own platform for AdSense on Mobile devices.

This acquisition also puts Google in a stronger position within the mobile display advertising market, which is one that is clearly seen to have big growth potential over the coming years. It also gives Google access to a great deal of experience and sophistication in the sector that it didn't previously have.