As Mobile Advertising Heats Up, Millennial Media Prepares For An IPO In 2011

Mobile advertising is currently a billion dollar market and we've witnessed tech giants like Google and Apple move into the space with the acquisitions of mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless, respectively. AdMob is now part of Google's mobile advertising business and Apple is using Quattro to power its new ad format, iAds. But there is another player that has silently been growing its business under the radar to become a dominant network in mobile advertising: Millennial Media . Currently, Millenial has the largest U.S. reach out of all the networks in terms of audience size according to Nielsen; with ads reaching 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web. Despite being one of the "big three" in the still-small mobile ad space, Millennial is relatively unknown, while its competitors have seen prominent coverage in the media. Besides its monthly reports on mobile ad traffic, Millennial has avoided some of the drama that has been taking place in the industry. I caught up with the company's CEO and co-founder Paul Palmieri to talk about how Millennial catapulted from a bootstrapped Baltimore-based startup to the largest independent mobile advertising company.