The best ad - from the perspective of both users and advertisers - is often something that will immediately let the two sides connect.  Google's taken an intelligent step forward, then, by allowing businesses to include clickable phone numbers in their mobile ads.

This should save people who want to call companies a fair amount of time they might otherwise have to spend navigating a site.  It'll also spare some smartphone owners the slight embarrassment of having to copy down a phone number...

Domain name registrar and web hosting provider GoDaddy appears to be really making a name for itself based on controversial Super Bowl ads. In fact, one could ponder whether or not the general public would have such a distinct idea of what GoDaddy even is, if it were not for its Super Bowl controversies. Something tells me that's just fine with GoDaddy. The company seems to feed off this stuff.

This year, GoDaddy says it has a new ad that was banned from the Super Bowl, even though the...

Microsoft has launched full HTML device targeting for advertisers, so that they can easily target mobile display ads to all handsets that can render full HTML sites (including sites developed for the PC Web). Such devices include iPhone, Android, and full HTML browser Windows phones and Blackberry devices.

"Targeting full HTML mobile devices is appealing to advertisers for many reasons," says Raj Kapoor of the Microsoft Mobile Advertising team. "Some advertisers wish to reach this audience...

The majority (69%) of media planners and agencies now use online advertising networks as part of their digital ad buys, representing a 24 percent increase in the past 18 months, according to a new study by Adify Media.

"Especially in light of the Dynamic Logic study that found that creative quality is 50 to 75 percent responsible for campaign success or failure, agencies must start evaluating the creative capabilities of networks," said Russ Fradin, president of Adify.

"As the industry...