This morning I used a legit mobile payment platform for the first time. I paid for parking in Miami with my cell phone once, but this was my first full-on retail experience. I downloaded the new Starbucks mobile payment app yesterday. It integrates easily with your existing Starbucks card and the balance shows right on the app. You can also see the nearest store and other useful info like whether they accept the mobile payments. It also shows you a graphic of how far a long you are toward your next reward.

Apple recently announced that Quattro Wireless will effectively disappear and become iAds moving forward. This isn’t a shock to anyone who’s paying attention, but it is a major development for those like me in mobile publishing. For some time now there have been three major ad networks for mobile devices: AdMob, Millennial Media and Quattro Wireless. There are a number of other networks but these three have had enough depth of advertisers to be significant sources of revenue for large mobile publishers. Two of those three were acquired within the past year and they have since taken very different paths that reflect the strategies of their acquirers.

Aquisitions in the mobile industry continue to be frothy, most recently with Opera’s acquisition of AdMarvel. The price was $8 million up front and a $15 million earn out based on hitting aggressive revenue targets. AdMarvel had taken on about $8 million in venture capital from various sources so this deal probably isn’t causing a lot of high fives around the office.

The deal does make a lot of strategic sense for Opera. They have a lot of mobile traffic and AdMarvel can help them monetize that traffic while also providing slick tools for direct advertisers.

The hits just keep coming in the mobile ad industry. Right on the heels of Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob is another big acquisition. Apple, who was rumored to have had interest in AdMob, ends up buying Quattro Wireless for $275 million.

I mentioned at the time that $750 struck me as a very lofty sum for AdMob. $275 million seems more reasonable to me but it’s still a fantastic exit for Quattro. Congrats guys. Both figures are far beyond the sums paid for Third Screen Media and Enpocket a couple years ago.

Yesterday was a very good day for the mobile industry. Google acquired leading mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in stock. I think there’s little doubt now that this was in fact the “year of mobile” that everyone has been predicting since…forever. An acquisition of that magnitude will bring a lot of attention and money into the industry.

I just attended the ad:tech conference for the first time and wow, that was an experience. It was the biggest conference I have ever attended. Not knowing this, I didn’t anticipate the ONE HOUR wait to get my badge. C’mon people, this is a high tech conference and they can’t get people in any faster than that?

Here’s what I noticed at ad:tech, there are a TON of “performance marketing” companies out there. So many that I wonder how they all survive. It was like going into Baskin Robbins and finding 34 different types of vanilla. The positioning varied slightly but the idea was always the same. Take some crappy CPA products that work well and add lots of remnant traffic. Voila, profit.

Yahoo has announced its intention to close its Search Submit program, which essentially means the end of paid inclusion as an option for marketers. This is relatively small news these days, paid inclusion and Yahoo in general aren’t as important to the search space as they once were. But I have a long history with paid inclusion, stretching back to 2001.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but there’s been a lot happening lately so I’m doing one post for everything. Lazy but effective.

First is the news that Google AdWords is now giving mobile keyword stats in their new keyword tool. There aren’t many good ways to get mobile search volume so this is fantastic. The way you do it is: log in to AdWords -> Campaign -> Keywords -> Add Keywords -> Select a campaign -> Select an AdGroup -> Click on the Keyword Tool link -> Click the link at the top for the new beta tool -> Click Advanced Options and check the mobile search checkbox. It couldn’t be easier! Seriously, if you know of a more direct route I’m all ears.

They didn’t want to be that blunt, but they did want to scare the bejesus out of ad buyers. Mpire, a company selling technology that identifies click fraud as one means of optimizing ad buys (a good idea, mind you) reports that 95% of clicks and half of ad impressions are fraudulent. Where the hell are they advertising? Miva? In all fairness, I haven’t advertised at Miva in over a year but the last time I did they liquidated funds with alacrity and zero conversions.

Yesterday my RSS feed had 2 headlines from the same source (MediaPost) that seemed to be in direct conflict. The first was Study Finds Mobilists Less Likely To Click Through and the second was Mobile Search Puts Web CTRs To Shame. My experience fits much better with the latter than the former so I took a look at both.