The Apple App Store and developer support largely are responsible for giving mobile marketing a boost, AdMob suggests.

Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch now account for more than four billion ad requests on AdMob’s network, about four times what it was a year earlier, and the two product lines make up 36 percent of Admob’s total requests.

Even as the global advertising industry entered a significant contraction in 2009, the nascent mobile ad market started heating up.

There are a couple of reasons. First, publishers of new mobile applications started paying other publishers every time a user clicked on their ads to download their applications. Second, brand advertisers sought to reach iPhone users as they surfed more frequently on their applications.

Jason Spero, vice president of marketing for Admob, pointed out in November 2008 that “the iPhone market is exploding, Inventory is growing and advertisers are hungry for it.”

Again, the driver is that apps are using mobile advertising to try and sell their applications in the app stores. After all, it doesn’t do much to create and sell an app if nobody knows about it. Apps have to make it to the top of any specific list to get attention and additional sales.

In October 2008, a free application needed to spend $10,000 to get on a “Top 25″ list. By December 2008, it took $11,000, and by March 2009, it took $20,000, according to Pinch Media.

To get to the coveted “number one” spot in the App Store, a company needed to spend $150,000, Pinch Media says. It might cost more than that at the moment.

Also, “brand advertisers” have increased their spending on the iPhone channel . Back in the fall of 2008, an increasing chunk of spending coming from four industries: TV and Hollywood, car manufacturers and dealerships, retailers, and financial services companies, according to data from ad networks including Millennial Media.

Disney, Ford, Sears, Procter & Gamble and Bank of America were among leading advertisers.

Premium publishers such as CBS, NBC or Elle also have upped their spending on iPhone apps.

Admob and Quattro Wireless were the most aggressive mobile ad networks to take early advantage of these trends, and not coincidentally, Admob now is owned by Google and Quattro Wireless is owned by Apple.

Both firms specialized in the “in-app advertising” capability.

Also, free applications supported by display advertising are the main driver of downloads from Google and Apple’s mobile app stores.

Free applications outnumber paid applications in both app stores, with both Google and Apple putting a lot of effort into supporting the free app model.

Google prefers to have mobile users access the mobile Web instead of have them locked up within smartphone applications. Apple may lean in the other direction, preferring advertising inserted into its larger basis of applications.

Mojiva, InMobi, Buzzcity, Velti, Amobee, JumpTap and Greystripe are other players in mobile advertising.

http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/01/19/mobile-ad-market-heats-up-lots-of-potential-lots-of-players/