Internet search giant Google revealed this week that mobile search ad request volume doubled in late 2011 when compared to the same time frame in 2010.

In a new interview with Tech Crunch, Google’s mobile search ads chief Surojit Chatterjee admits that mobile search has increased five-fold in the past two two years alone.

Chatterjee says that quality of search ads is increasing thanks to some of the new factors being considered in mobile search ad rankings. For example, mobile web-optimized sites are now ranked higher. Since August 2011, Google has seen more than a 50 percent increase in the number of AdWords advertisers with a mobile optimized sites.

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Forget traditional celebrity endorsements and cameo appearances, some of this year’s biggest Super Bowl commercials will feature celebrities of a different variety – those who have revolutionized mobile technologies.

Leading the charge in this new direction is Best Buy. According to published reports from Bloomberg today, Best Buy’s Super Bowl commercial will feature mobile pioneers, not run-of-the-mill celebrities.

This is quite a divergence from previous years at Best Buy when the company has turned to the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber for ads on the big game day.

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According to a thought-provoking study published Wednesday by Ypulse, “even tech-savvy millennials are baffled” by augmented reality technology, particularly when its infused in mobile apps on leading smartphones.

“Augmented reality has become the futuristic media of the moment, but many consumers,” Ypulse says, but even mobile’s core audience – young, hip, tech-wise adults – are “having a hard time figuring it out.”

Based on the findings of Ypulse’s research, only 11% of high schoolers and collegians have ever used an augmented reality app.

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This week, Rep. Edward Markey raised the curtain on what could amount to federal legislation that adds substantive mobile privacy safeguards to the mobile phone user population of the United States.

On Tuesday, Markey released a discussion draft of the proposed Mobile Device Privacy Act, which, if enacted, would obligate wireless operators and their partners to “notify subscribers if they employ mobile analytics measurement tools like the controversial Carrier IQ.”

As MMW previously reported, the Carrier IQ software is a rootkit that is installed at a carrier’s request on mobile phones and sparks privacy concerns because it monitors and logs user activity.

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The folks over at long-standing digital marketing agency White Horse have published an interesting new infographic that details the concept of “in-aisle” mobile engagement and it’s increasing growth in recent years.

The data used for the infographic stems from a report White Horse published last year called “The Future of In-Aisle Mobile,” in which the agency conducted a first-of-its-kind ethnographic study on consumer use of smartphones to aid in-aisle shopping.  The result was a dramatic picture of the gap between consumer mobile behavior in the aisle and retailers’ readiness to channel that behavior into customer loyalty and sales.

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According to an eye-opening projection today from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, Apple’s Chinese investment will begin paying enormous dividends next year.

Just two weeks ago, massive crowds outside of Beijing’s Apple Store caused Chinese police to deploy crowd-control measures to ease the iPhone 4S frenzy caused by the device’s long-anticipated arrival.

So unruly were Apple fans that the company was forced to strip the Aple Stores of their iPhone 4S unventory and revert back to selling the smartphones online only in China for the time being.

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The folks over at Text Marketer have published a new infographic that explains how to run a successful SMS campaign by avoiding the so-called “7 deadly sins of mobile marketing.”

Covering everything from the right calls-to-actions to proper testing, segmentation, and even the downfalls of developing a “pointless app,” the infographic uses original, primary research with references to eConsultancy and the Information Commissioners Office out of the U.K.

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