The mobile advertising market is looking like one beacon of light in these dark economic times. As Russell’s pointed out, his employer AdMob continues to grow, and other players in the space are seeing substantial growth, too, like MADS, a mobile ad company out of Amsterdam.

I spoke to MADS’ CEO, Ashu Mathura a little while back, and he talked me through their multi-channel system that publishers and marketers can use to insert ads in mobile web content, messaging, applications, video and other types of mobile content. They also have an offering for operators that allows them not only to create inventory in their own content, but to use their subscriber CRM data, as well as behavioral data, to better target ads and create more compelling campaigns for advertisers.

As consumers worldwide seek to rein in their spending, companies like MADS that can enable ad-supported content and free services should do well. The big assumption, of course, is that marketers will keep spending — but like others in the field, MADS is seeing very high clickthrough rates (up to 10%) relative to standard web advertising. MADS also says it’s currently processing 300 million ads per month, an increase of 50 million in two months, and it’s now touting its ability to let marketers create campaigns across 15 European countries through its interface.

This is a great time to be in the mobile advertising business. More and more publishers are becoming interested in monetizing their mobile web traffic, and with good reason. Personally, I continue to be amazed at the performance of ads on MobHappy’s mobile web site relative to the Google ads on our standard web site (noting that I’ve done little to optimize the standard ads). We get a clickthrough rate that’s roughly 15 (yes, fifteen) times higher on mobile and the eCPM is about three times higher, generating very impressive revenues relative to AdSense on the standard site (but still not enough to let Russell and I retire ). For publishers that have large or growing mobile web traffic, these sorts of figures are mouth-watering. Add in the ability that companies like MADS can offer to enable ads in other channels and craft new ad-supported mobile services, and their enthusiasm is easy to understand.

Meanwhile, operators’ interest in advertising is growing as well, as they look to supplant direct consumer spending and boost flagging revenues. They already have the potential to create significant inventory thanks to their portals and other content; I’m very optimistic that new technologies and companies like MADS will help foster the creation of new ad-supported services so that users, as well as publishers and operators, can benefit as well.

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