JoeTrippi.com

The hype surrounding micro-targeted location-based mobile advertising has been building for some time now. Now it looks like it is ready to really take off in the near future as a result of continued advances in mobile technologies. TechCrunch reports:

[R]esearch firm Kelsey Group see[s] the market grow[ing] from just $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion in 2013. eMarketer projects mobile advertising spending in the US will balloon from $648 million in 2008 to over $3.3 billion in 2013.

While some believe search will account for the biggest chunk of the market, others expect geo-aware advertising, another way of bringing “relevant” ads to users, to have a bright future, too. This is where AdLocal, a location-based, self-service mobile ad platform that (re-)launched yesterday, comes in.

Offered by Sunnyvale-based Cirius Technologies USA, the platform has been around in Japan since 2006, currently commanding the largest share of location-based advertising in Japan’s $1 billion [PDF] mobile ad space. And now Cirius is ready to utilize the years of experience the company gained in the world’s most competitive mobile market in the US (AdLocal isn’t available outside America and Japan at this point).

AdLocal allows advertisers to manage their campaigns and publishers to add their mobile sites or applications by themselves through a Web-based dashboard. By locating a mobile user’s physical location via GPS, cell identification and other methods, the mobile ad network can tell when a consumer is close to a specific business address and then serves up tailor-made ads for that business in real-time.

EMarketer sees the increase in mobile advertising a result of better mobile devices, improved wireless networks, as well as richer content being accessible online. You can read more at TechCrunch.