Indian carrier Aircel teamed with youth media firm Blyk to launch a content and advertising service in November 2010. It represented the first deployment for Blyk outside of Europe, the firm having switched its model from ad-funded virtual operator to carrier partner after its MVNO play failed to gain the necessary traction. Blyk co-founder Antti Öhrling and Aircel COO Gurdeep Singh spoke to Mike Hibberd about the drivers behind this latest partnership, and the firms’ plans for the future

In terms of generating substantial revenues for value-chain participants, 2010 still won’t be the year of mobile advertising. However, we are now seeing increasing examples of successful mobile advertising campaigns and market activity including in-house innovation, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions. Media and FMCG brands are also experiencing growing consumer engagement on mobile and together these developments are starting to provide the much needed momentum the mobile advertising industry needs. This will no doubt lead to accelerated growth of mobile advertising in 2011 and beyond.

US watchdog the Federal Trade Commission has closed its investigation of Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising network AdMob, concluding that the deal is unlikely to harm competition in the nascent mobile advertising market.

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.

Apple will prevent third party developers from using its iPhone platform to enable location based advertising, in a move which is perhaps designed to protect its own future plans in the mobile ad space.

The Informer attended a glittering occasion at London’s Science Museum last night, held to celebrate 25 years of the UK cellular industry. He had a wonderful time, wandering around the museum looking at all the old relics, some of whom had some fascinating stories to tell.