Mobile ad network Quattro Wireless has scored the exclusive mobile ad campaign for Panasonic's Link-to-Cell product. Quattro is providing Panasonic both publishing and ad sales to promote its bluetooth product. This includes a branded, mobile site for Panasonic's Link-to-Cell product with mobile commerce capabilities powered by Amazon.Com. Quattro will be leveraging its publisher network and participating retailers for the mobile campaign.

It will be interesting to see how Quattro links the mobile experience and campaign capabilities to the core product feature - bluetooth. While many consumers have bluetooth-enabled devices, many U.S. consumers are not necessarily aware of the feature, nor have the feature enabled. Potentially those interested in the Panasonic product will be those that are early adopters and are utilizing bluetooth in their daily lives.

So, I've always been into Top 10s. This must be a hold-over from when I was a fan of "Late Night With David Letterman." Well, AOL has just released it's Top Web, Mobile and Video Searches for 2008 (even though 2008 is not over yet). When evaluating this list, we have to keep in mind that according to newly released data from ComScore, AOL ranks a distant fourth with respect to mobile search market share (see mediabistro's "ComScore Releases October Search Results.") Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that the top five mobile searches are (drum roll please):

1) MySpace,
2) AIM,
3) iPhone,
4) MocoSpace and
5) Facebook.

See full report for more details. It is notable that of these top five searches two are mobile-specific - iPhone and MocoSpace. Neither is all that surprising. The iPhone is well the iPhone. And, free mobile social networking site MocoSpace has been successful in driving significant page views/traffic early in the mobile web.

Seems like whenever I blink there is another company entering the ever more crowded mobile marketing and advertising enablement and services space. Now this is not to say that these companies have the same roots (mobile specialist or online roots) are focused on solving the same problems on the same platforms in the same markets. So, it is very likely that there is room for some of these companies to bring something new to the table and grab some of the limited, but growing mobile marketing dollars. However, it just seems that there is a lot of noise out there. I have to be frank, I don't know many of these companies and some of them most definitely deserve a look. Among those that are new to me and that I am watching include VideoEgg, which has roots in the interactive online space and recently extended its Ad Frames, performance-based video solution to mobile, and specifically the iPhone.

Kyte, which helps content creators (brands and communities) produce and distribute mobile content (largely video created on the mobile device) online, has refocused its efforts on helping content owners build-up mobile web/video presence and monetization capabilities. See CNET and TechCrunch for more on Kyte's efforts.

Adding ad networks should help content owners monetize their mobile web presence. However, attracting ad dollars is also contingent upon giving content owners the proper tools to deliver compelling mobile video content to build audience reach and consumer engagement. This will also extend to Kyte's ability to extend device support and continue to innovate and add platform feature capabilities (e.g., support of live streaming, etc.).

Friday's weekly "Reality Check" column in RCR Wireless, written by Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting, goes old-school with its "Wap is dead" focus. The question raised in the article is really around the future of WAP versus app environments in accessing mobile data applications. While I do believe that many consumers with smartphones will download apps that they regularly access on their mobile phones, the browser, and enhancements made to the browser, will continue put it front and center to broader consumer mobile data engagement/usage. Companies like Skyfire, Opera Software, and others are betting on it. The real question for me is: how the evolution of the mobile app and mobile web environments will impact the advertising market?

Pandora has a new competitor in the music discovery space. Mufin, a German start-up that spun out of Fraunhofer Institute (birthplace of the MP3 format), has launched the public beta of its service that uses audio fingerprinting to determine its recommendations.

Like Pandora, Mufin determines what music users like based on a song they select as a favorite. Using that selection as a guide, Mufin analyzes more than 40 characteristics of the song like tempo, instruments, sound density and rhythm structure and recommends other tracks with similar characteristics.

It also has a Shazam-like music ID feature, an automatic playlist generator and something called Mufin vision, which allows mobile service providers to let their customers display complete music collections in a single view for fast access to songs.

Mufin licenses its audio ID, identification, navigation and recommendation technology to digital music stores, mobile service providers and mobile device vendors who want to use music as a way to add new revenue streams.

With the big three US automakers might be looking for a handout, it's not such a surprise that relative young'uns like Kia are showing off their new and future cars with splashy campaigns.

Together with ad agency David&Goliath and mobile Web site developer Usablenet, Kia unveiled Kia Soul Mobile, a microsite designed to give consumers all the info and interaction they could want - except for a test drive.

The site, which debuted at the LA Auto Show yesterday, has all sorts of Kia Soul info and images, including downloadable artwork from 10 artists inspired by "the Soul's unique design." Kia Soul Mobile also provides a way for auto show attendees to interact with print collateral through 2D barcodes and SMS keywords.

Mobile app site GetJar is changing the face of WAP sites to make them stickier. While iPhone and other advanced handset owners are busily populating their phone's screen with icons linked to all sorts of applications, WAP sites are being ignored because there's nothing to download. So, to help start evening out the playing field and help WAP sites get the traffic they deserve, GetJar has created a free Visual Bookmark service.

Visual Bookmarks are tiny apps that sit on a phone's home screen, just like all those icons on your phone. But, when the user clicks on the bookmark, instead of linking to an application, it launches the connected WAP site using the phone's browser.

To use a Visual Bookmark, WAP site publishers just need to visit GetJar.com, specify their site's URL and upload a graphic. Consumers visiting GetJar can download the Visual Bookmarks and get an automatic shortcut to their favorite sites.

GetJar even conducted a little research sturdy and found that folks who find mobile sites through a Visual Bookmark are four- to eight-times as likely to return to those sites as consumers who discovered the sites through search engines, SMS messages, banner ads or text links.

Of course, it is GetJar's own research, so make of it what you will.

MetaTXT, the first mobile search engine optimization standard, has gained the support of 10 mobile advertising networks and search engines including Abphone, Bango, JumpTap, Taptu, MCN, Medio, Mobilytics, Nubiq, RingRing Media and Visibility Mobile, who have banded together to form a working group to further the standard.

With 1,000 mobile sites using it already, metaTXT enhances mobile search by indexing all types of mobile sites together, whether they're m.name.com, wap.name.com, name.com/mobile or mobi. This, the group says, helps brands gain more mobile awareness.

Details on how to use metaTXT are available in a white paper. More info on the standard itself can be found on the group's blog at www.mobileseonews.com.

Crisp Wireless, known most for building mobile-specific sites for premium M&E companies, today announced that it is powering People.Com Mobile and also providing ad sales. Found at m.people.com typed into the browser (or I would assume redirected to on a mobile device), the mobile site will include the usual People.Com entertainment content fare. Additional mobile integration includes SMS alerts and content sharing, as well as social networking and social media.

With more and more consumers relying on the mobile web, a compelling mobile web presence is key. People.Com already has audience (8 million monthly uniques), and many of these users can be converted to mobile visitors if the content and experience is compelling.