Not only is the mobile advertising network booming, it continues to find new ways to move forward and prosper. Current efforts have proven that mobile advertising and marketing are continuing to morph and develop into one of the largest advertising platforms. Apple recently made a change, which was one of many, that will heavily impact the mobile advertising arena moving forward.

Apple kicked off 2010 strong with the purchase of the cellular phone advertising company Quattro Wireless. Nearly eight months later, Apple decided to pull the plug on Quattro network and focus their energy into their own mobile advertising platform, also known as iAd. The termination of Quattro now allows Apple to focus its resources and efforts into improving the iAd Network, and hopefully converting Quattro’s existing customers into iAd users.

Apple’s relationship with Quattro is not the only recent change made by Apple; Apple has also announced that they are loosening up their iAd terms and agreements. Apple’s recent revisions to their agreement terms will now allow their competitor, Google, to sell and serve mobile advertising on their devices. This recent update has lifted the verbiage which previously specified that developers were not permitted to make use of any third-party advertising companies owned by or even affiliated with a distributor of mobile devices, which included Google’s AdMob. This change will open up the flood gates to a number of mobile advertising companies, who are now understandably thrilled by this new opportunity.

Users will benefit from an increase in inexpensive or even free applications that can more easily be supported by advertising. Prior to Apple lifting its regulations, there was a concern that Apple would be closed off to all ad networks that weren’t independent. Apple’s revised agreement will now allow both Google and AdMob to continue to serve advertisements to Apple devices. This newly enabled competitiveness in the mobile community is great news for everyone involved. This not only will facilitate lower costs for users, but also help to increase innovation and growth.

It has become strikingly apparent that browsing the internet from your mobile device is becoming increasingly more common.  So making sure that your website is mobile friendly and you are leveraging your mobile traffic to the best of your ability, should be of the utmost importance to you. The main question that tends to perplex people is whether or not visitors are trying to find their website from a mobile device?

The best way to establish whether or not visitors are seeking out your website from a mobile device is through your analytical data. Google Analytics is the best free tool in helping you to analyze your website traffic. You can find out how many people are coming to your site from a mobile device and how they are interacting with your site.  As a result you will be able to either confirm or deny your need for a mobile friendly website.

Google Analytics permits you to make advanced custom segments, which allow you to easily determine if visitors are coming to your site from a mobile device. To begin creating an advanced custom segment, click “Advanced Segments” from the “My Customizations” section of your profile and then click “Create New Advanced Segment.”

Follow the 7 easy steps below to create your customize advanced segment and better determine how many visitors are finding you from their mobile device.

1. Drag the `Dimension’ or metric from the left-hand side into the field bordered by dotted lines. (i.e. `Operating Systems’, as seen above)
2. Choose the `Condition’ appropriate to your segment. (i.e. starts with, ends with, greater than.. etc) “Contains” was the value used in our example above.
3. Enter the comparison `Value’ you are using to measure the condition selected. (illustrated above are the names of the operating systems)
4. You can use “and” “or” statements as well to make the segments more comprehensive and limiting.
5. Be sure to click ‘Test Segment.’ to ensure that you chose conditions that make sense and pull data correctly.
6. Name your segment accordingly, and then click ‘Create Segment’ to complete the creation of the segment.
7. Once you have saved the advanced segment, you will be able to apply it through the ‘advanced segments” function in your profile. You will also have the ability to edit the segment at a later date as seen below.

 
Now comes the fun part! You will now be able to determine the quality and quantity of your mobile traffic through your newly created advanced segment and validate the need for creating a mobile friendly website.

As search queries continue to evolve, so does Google’s search strategy. With searchers becoming more and more in tune with what they want and how to search to obtain the most relevant results, Google has adapted.

Google has begun testing brand recommendations in response to search queries. Users searching for items such as cameras, phones, mp3 player, printers, vacuums and many more are seeing more than the average results. Google is now displaying brand recommendations based on the above type of search queries.

(Screen Shot f Brand Recommendations Below)

The recommended brands are listed at the top of the organic results, just below the sponsored ad results. The big brands are gaining more exposure in the Google search results than possibly ever before.

The question that advertisers and marketers will want to know is how they can get their brands to appear within these recommendations? Are they based on the size and popularity of a brand? If so, do only large brand companies have the ability to gain this exposure? That leering question has yet to have been answered by Google. It is still unclear how brands get the ability to show up in these brand recommendations or what Google’s rational is behind this new feature.