Millennial Media is announcing new SDKs for Android and iPhone to help their developer community, which has grown 138% since January, make better, more engaging ads. The Android SDK will see most of the updates which brings it up to speed with the current iPhone SDK.

Android and iPhone continue to be important sectors of Millennial’s network. In April, Apple was the leading operating system on the network, with a 62% share of Smartphone impressions. Android ad requests grew 77% month over month; since January 2010, Android has grown 282%.

Millennial Media, the largest independent mobile advertising platform, today released new Software Developer Kits (SDKs) for Android OS and iPhone OS, (Android SDK 3.5 and iPhone SDK 3.5.5, respectively). These releases mark the third SDK release on each operating system in less than six months. With comparable velocity, Millennial Media’s developer community has grown 138% since January 2010, due to the company’s platform-agnostic position and unparalleled mobile ad demand.

Millennial Media’s new Android SDK provides developers parity with iPhone advertising functionality, for the first time, including:

· Static & Video Interstitials

· Expanding Banner

· Transparent Overlay

· Companion Ads

These capabilities are not new to iPhone developers; but they were not previously available for Android developers. Speed to market is critical for developers, as advertisers’ mobile ad demands are continuously evolving. While other mobile advertising companies focus primarily on developer publishers, Millennial Media also strives to deliver a development platform upon which agencies and advertiser-side developers can deliver consistent, innovative creative, while reaching the broadest audience. The new Android SDK allows developers the ability to garner higher monetization opportunities by partnering with Millennial Media.

“On April 9, 2010, we released our iPad SDK and PadMedia Creative Suite™ for developers. The PadMedia creative provides increased user engagement opportunities for advertisers; and therefore, increased monetization opportunities for developers,” said Steven McCord, Head of Product Development, Millennial Media. “Our new SDK release includes deeper developer tools to integrate this SDK into iPhone or iPad applications.”

Inside the Numbers – iPhone verses Android

As reported in Millennial Media’s latest Mobile Mix: The Device Index, Apple was the leading operating system on the network, with a 62% share of Smartphone impressions. Android ad requests grew 77% month over month; since January 2010, Android has grown 282%. Android represents more than 10% of Millennial Media’s U.S. Smartphone impressions. iPad ad requests grew nearly 77% week over week for the first full month the device was in market.

The updated Android and Apple SDKs are live and available for download, via Millennial Media’s developer portal, mmDev, at http://developer.millennialmedia.com/

Developer Opportunity Is Huge

As we have reported before the mobile developer opportunity is very hot.  As an independent company Millennial Media becomes the trusted neutral (non-biased) provider for developers across a huge distribution base of mobile partners who Millennial currently work with. Now developers don’t have to rely solely on either Google and/or Apple only to ensure critical mass distribution and monetization.

Now that the Admob acquisition is completed by Google, Millennial Media is part of the big three of mobile players – Google, Apple, and Millennial. With Millennial being the only independent. This kind of choice only benefits the market.

Data = Better User Experience; Better User Experience = Monetization

As we’ve been saying at SiliconAngle for over a year now, data is becoming the most important thing for developers and now for advertisers especially in mobile. Data drives a better user experience and a better user experience drive monetization. Data and data analysis is at the heart of this value proposition.

Look at the search industry in say Google. Having access to data enabled Google to build a quality search product and ad network.  With Google constantly iterating their data quality they were able to consistently build better algorithms to present users with a compelling search product.

In mobile and smartphones search doesn’t really work like on the wbe due to the screen size and real time nature of mobility. So display advertising hold the best seat at the table with respect to the search opportunity on mobile.  The display ad and applications will be the vehicle where innovation (e.g. like search in late 90s) around consumer experience will occur.

The result for consumers will look like some automated cloud service that will do most of the work and then just show up in the display of the smartphone.

Data Innovation Cycle – SmartPhones Enabled This Phenomenon

With the creation of the iPhone the industry is seeing massive change.  A paradigm that I haven’t seen since the disruption of the browser.  I expect to see some major game changing user experiences over the next 10 years.  I call it the mobile innovation cycle – enabled by Apple’s iPhone a few years ago.

My analogy:  What the iPhone/iPad will do for mobile today is what the original Macintosh did for computing back in 1984- change the game in terms of user expectations around the required experience.

This trend has been validated by Steve Jobs when Steve called at D8 that the PC Era is over.

Below is an illustration of what is happening.  Rapid innovation around applications that is spawn new data.  This new data is the powerful new disruptor or Data Is The New Developer Kit of which I’ve written in the past many times.  How developers leverage data will determine how to make their applications more successful.

How they iterate the data feedback cycle is key.   I call it the Mobile Application Innovation Cycle.

The iPhone (now Android) kicked off a massive development boom for applications in this case millions of apps. So what we have here is a “long tail” of applications. These long tail apps are creating a data tsunami and this data is very valuable. The opportunity is to make sense of the data and move that back through to the apps and the consumer. This cycle is very rapid and will create an opportunity for platforms that can leverage the data to provide a better user experience.

This is new data never seen before so it’s a big opportunity.  Data is the development kit.  Millennial Media’s leadership position in the display mobile ad market gives them a beachhead for developers to leverage with applications.

The future is not about low CPM-based display, but instead using that display reach and real estate to provide a better user experience both in terms of reach and data. In this use case (which will be the case trust me) the developers win and Millennial will get a cut of that revenue for providing the reach (distribution) and data (monetization enablement).

At the end of the day for mobile ad provider or developer whoever can: 1) reduce the steps to finding content, 2) make the mobile web easier to use, and 3) save the consumer time will be the massive success story of the mobile web.

These three things (reducing steps, making it easier, and saving time) will drive consumer adoption and create massive growth and revenue opportunities for the companies making it happen.

Changing Landscape of Mobile – It’s Not Search

Online advertising has been a disaster for years. No offense Google, but search advertising doesn’t relate to the new user experience in mobile. Everyone is just shrugging their shoulders, “Yeah we know it (search ads) is ineffective and produces a poor user experience on mobile, but there is nothing else available”.  Enter the world of social networks, better broadband, social media, virtural goods, etc… , now the picture is getting clearer.

The future is bright. This is where Admob and competitors like Apple and Millennial Media come in.

New Models Coming

The public secret today in online advertising is that search based advertising is saturated. Banners are sliding into the land of irrelevance.  As more and more online advertising dollars flood into the mobile sector, new advertising mobile media will capture most of the revenue.

What will the new advertising media be? It’s not search but instead “consumer media”, “customized media”, “vertically focused media” and “social media”, among other new approaches.

We are already seeing a flourish of new kinds of ad networks developing. Social networks are where the most exciting and relevant digital advertising solutions are developing. Social networks have unique micro-targeting capability and amazing behavioral measurement capability. Just look at how Twitter is positioning themselves and the new role that crowdsourcing is playing.

The big question is, “What is the ad unit?” What does contextual mean now?” Is behavioral still relevant?

New Viable Solutions

Social networks, video content, social media, community driven content, crowd endorsed media, and other forms of contextual and behavioral advertising will emerge as the viable and scalable solutions.

Who will lead this new model of advertising? The users and new consumer behavior.

Advertisers go where the users are and the new user behavior is not about page views, banners, or search ads anymore. Although search ads won’t die their overall percentage of the marketing spend will shrink which shows why Google paid $800m for AdMob.

Catalyst for Change?

The big catalyst is money. Too much money is coming into the sector for these solutions now. The combination of ‘social network’ and ‘social media’ (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) will be a big driver to transition to the new ad models both in mobile.