If any of you have used Admob before you will know that the majority of the ads that are served up on their network are pretty much replicas of traditional online banner ads and in most cases not well targeted and un-actionable. Mr. Jobs see’s this hole and knows the true powers of both mobile and more specifically the iPhone. Mobile advertising has the potential to be much more valuable than web based advertising both to end-users and brands. Instead of simply serving up two-dimensional banner ads that click to a mobile website, Jobs see’s the potential of utilizing the vast functionality of these smart phones to engage end-users.

Take this scenario for example. A user is checking their Yahoo Fantasy Sports app on the iPhone during Football Sunday. The phone knows which app is being used when and knows to serve up a Domino’s Pizza ad. The ad shows the latest deals from Domino’s and then lets the end-user make a call directly from the ad. The user is also then able to download a coupon from the ad directly into their phone’s photo gallery so that when the delivery boy arrives at the door they can redeem their discount. In cases like these the advertisement is adding loads of value to the end user and because they are so engaged the brand (Domino’s in this case) is happy.

Spreed believes in this methodology and is actively building these types of ads for our publishers’ advertising partners. In addition our ad platform has advanced targeting capabilities. Because we analyze every action that goes on within our apps we can begin profiling users and serving them the right ads at the right time.

These are very early days for the mobile advertising industry, however we believe, just like Steve Jobs, that this industry needs to go a lot further than simply pushing a random banner ad to an unknown end user.

Since our last post we quietly launched the Globe and Mail’s iPhone application. I call this a quiet launch as the app currently does not include all the features we plan on rolling out to the mass public. We used a strong early adopter community on Twitter to test out the base application. This was done to ensure our core focus on creating a strong, best of breed, content application was satisfied. Since the initial launch we have garnered lots of fantastic user feedback both through the hashtag #globeapp on twitter and through our uservoice page. This feedback has led to a second release that includes offline reading as well as haptic feedback and has also paved the way for many more future product developments.

Thanks to our core group of early adopters, it is safe to say that the soft-launch of the Globe and Mail application was a huge success. The usage numbers are through the roof and we have already been featured on one of Canada’s most prominent technology blogs, Techvibes. Warren Frey, who contributes to Techvibes on the topic of game changing business models states that:

As an ardent news junkie, one thing I immediately noticed about the app is that it’s rock solid. Unlike the New York Times iphone app, Spreed’s app is robust and never freezes up and crashes …

It’s  not what’s under the hood that’s interesting about Spreed, though they’ve certainly done a good job of crafting a solid mobile news app. It’s their adaptation of print media to a new form in a smart way that’s most impressive.

We appreciate Warren’s understanding and excitement for our new business model and are very proud that he believes that our goal of creating a reliable and user friendly way of diseminating the news on mobile phones has been achieved.

I would like to thank Warren and all the members of our fantastic early adopter community. Without all of you this application would not have been such a great success and we look forward to working with everyone in the near future to help build a best of breed mobile newspaper platform.