The first point to consider:

In February 2010, smartphones accounted for 48 percent of AdMob’s worldwide traffic, up from 35 percent in February 2009.

More and more people are upgrading their shitphones to Smartphones. This can only be good news for the marketplace.

The strong growth of iPhone and Android traffic, fueled by heavy application usage, was primarily responsible for increase. Although the share of feature phone traffic in AdMob’s network declined from 58 percent to 35 percent year-over-year, absolute traffic from feature phones still grew 31 percent. Mobile Internet devices experienced the strongest growth of the three categories, increasing to account for 17 percent of traffic in AdMob’s network in February 2010. The iPod touch is the top mobile Internet device and is responsible for vast majority of this traffic, other devices include the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi.

Highlights from the February 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

iPhone OS increased its share of smartphone requests from 33 percent in February 2009 to 50 percent in February 2010.

That’s pretty impressive — but to be expected given AdMob’s heavy emphasis toward the platform. Good news for publishers and advertising chasing iPhone users!

Next up, Symbian…

Symbian’s share of smartphone requests fell from 43 percent in February 2009 to 18 percent in February 2010.

This is why Nokia and Symbian is viewed as more or less irrelevant by much of the American media and application developer space. It is perhaps to be expected, given the reach AdMob has embedded on applications and on sites heavily frequented by iPhone/Android users. Let’s look at Android:

Android increased its share from two percent in February 2009 to 24 percent in February 2010.

That’s pretty dramatic, given the number of handsets that shipped last year.

Now let’s get some more Android focused perspective:

The top five Android devices worldwide, by traffic, were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ. The Google Nexus One only generated one percent of total Android traffic in February 2010.

And now a nod to the rest of the marketplace:

Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and LG were the top manufacturers of feature phones. Top feature phones from each manufacturer in AdMob’s network were the Samsung SCH R350, Nokia 3110c, Sony Ericsson W200i, Motorola RAZR V3, and LG CU920.

[Note: Do remember that AdMob's stats, whilst indicative, are based on being able to track users viewing AdMob inventory. So if you visit Mobile Industry Review on your mobile, you're being tracked by AdMob (since we carry ads there) but if you *ONLY* visit The Application Review on your mobile, you won't be tracked and your usage won't be included in AdMob's metrics. So do keep a pinch of salt around when you're evaluating the stats in the context of the whole industry.]

You can pick up the full report here.

That’s a quote I got from a chap I met today about San Francisco. They love their iPhones here, they really do.

But iPhone lovin’ isn’t just restricted to the City By The Bay. It’s spreading.

Yes it’s still a tiny dot in the ocean of mobile — but it’s a very, very influential dot.

Enter AdMob, then with their August statistics. They’ve served over 35 million ads on the iPhone platform during the month. To put this in perspective, they served 3.6 billion ads across their whole mobile platform in August.

Why’s the iPhone different? Well, it offers a heck of a lot more. You can get creative. You’re not restricted to text or a really, really small, piece-of-shit advert. You’ve got real estate to play with.

Here are some recent examples (the ads are at the bottom):

Smart. Very smart. AdMob are reporting nearly three times the response rate from iPhone ads compared with normal text based mobile ads. It’s not surprising.

I’m also pleased to see that a lot of brands are taking the plunge and experimenting. Here are just a few:

EA Mobile, Herbal Essences, Universal Studios’ The Mummy 3, Land Rover, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Fox Searchlights’ Choke, MGMs’ College, Summit Films’ Sex Drive, Toshiba, CBS News, Luxor Hotel, and DirecTV

I’m hoping to get a few minutes with Jason from AdMob sometime this week so I’ll see if I can get more perspective.

There is something ever so exciting about getting an AdMob Payment notification email.

We’ve had AdMob advertising on SMS Text News Mobile for quite a while and it routinely generates maybe $70-$80 a month. Certainly not enough to fund an Unlimited Drinks event in London, but you know, it works, this mobile advertising thing.

If you’re one of the mobile readers clicking now and again on little adverts that appeal, good-on-ya. I have to confess I’ve clicked once or twice. Not, I hasten to add, in a bid to drive up revenue. Not at all. More out of curiosity because the advertising is actually working on me.

I particularly like to see ads that are targeted to the browser or mobile handset that I’m using at the time, (e.g. “Get ringtones and themes for your iPhone/Nokia”). I’ve been a customer of that service a few times as a result.

5 June, 2008 – AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, has today announced the expansion of its European operations with the opening of its London office and the appointment of Laurence Aderemi as the company’s Business Development Director in EMEA and Katy Reed as Account Manager for AdMob’s advertisers. In his new role, Aderemi is responsible for expanding the company’s global partner network, which currently stands at more than 4,500.

Aderemi has more than seven years experience in the e-commerce landscape, having held senior business development positions at Yahoo! Search Marketing, Soucha Company and Move.com. Prior to his position at AdMob, Aderemi was the EU General Manager for domain/error monitisation and syndicated search at Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), where he was responsible for negotiating, establishing and implementing new partnerships. This wealth of top-level experience in the e-commerce space, including knowledge of the key players, industry structures and technology platforms, will stand Aderemi in good stead to fulfill his remit at AdMob.

Looking forward to hearing more from AdMob!