On Thursday, Millennial Media published its Q3 SMART report.

The latest in-depth report from the folks at Millennial Media highlights key areas of the mobile marketing realm that have made significant gains in recent months.

According to the findings presented in the report, local market targeting grew a staggering 50% quarter-over-quarter, and certain “post-click” options, like the ability to watch video, similarly grew 78% quarter-over-quarter.

Finance, however, was the top US ad vertical on Millennial Media’s network and has grown 356% year-over-year. Entertainment, on the other hand, was the top International ad vertical.

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In a rather interesting turn of events, it was revealed today that Urban Airship — a pioneer in mobile push notification technology — has acquired SimpleGeo, a company that specialized in gathering and storing mobile location data.

Just three months ago, the two companies announced a partnership with the intention of providing developers an easier way to offer location-aware push notifications in their applications.  It made a perfect fit as both companies looked at geo-specific push notifications as major sources of revenue, and decided it was better to move forward as one company rather than two.

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It was announced today that mobile location-based infrastructure provider Location Labs has acquired two companies — mobile development platform Wirkle and group messaging provider Volly.

Location Labs has largely been known to provide an underlying location-based infrastructure for mobile apps, but has recently transitioned into a provider of specialized location-based services for niches such as family safety and safe driving.  Both Wirkle with its development platform and Volly with its group mobile messaging solution fit nicely with Location Labs’s future plans, making both acquisitions timely and relevant for the company.

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It was announced today that mobile analytics powerhouse Flurry has introduced Analytics 3.1 — the latest version of its popular analytics suite for mobile apps.

Version 3.0 was just launched in August, and the 3.1 update adds three unique time-based metrics to its reporting capabilities for mobile app developers.  Analytics 3.1 introduces day-parting, lifecycle and hourly stat drill-down features, allowing deep insights into app usage that were hard to come by before.  Let’s take a closer look at the new metrics . . .

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Our friends over at Tatango have released their latest infographic on “where smartphones are being used,” which is a nice follow up to their last graphic on how smartphones are being used.

The data used for this graphic comes from a mobile survey conducted in September from Prosper Mobile Insights.  The data matches up with previous survey data showing that people use their smartphones at interesting times — such as in church and while on a date.

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The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published a new whitepaper on location based services marketing.

The whitepaper underscores the MMA’s commitment to expanding knowledge about and familiarity with Location Based Services (LBS).

“Mobile Location Based Services Marketing” was created by the MMA Privacy and Preferences Committee.

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The Federal Communications Commission is drawing a line in the sand regarding GPS availability in mobile phones.

The FCC has ruled that all operators must integrate GPS into mobile phones by 2018.

“The Federal Communications Commission will require all telephone service providers to use accuracy standards based on GPS capable handsets, and Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers will have to require new subscribers to use GPS enabled handsets to pinpoint the location of 911 calls, by 2018,” writes Travis Sanford of Courthouse News Service.

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