Today during Apple’s iPhone 4.0 developer preview, Steve Jobs announced a number of new innovations for its mobile platform. OS 4 will bring multitasking and folders to the iPhone, iBooks will come to the device, and Apple officially announced its venture into mobile advertising iAds. Plus, the latest number of iPads sold and app downloads was announced. And interestingly, Jobs made time to throw a few jabs at Google.

In regards to multitasking, Jobs said “In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it. Users shouldn’t have to ever, ever, ever think about that stuff.” This is a direct hit at Google’s Android system. While a task manager isn’t 100 percent necessary on Android phones, many people download and use it to manage multiple apps running on the device.

In regard to mobile search Jobs said, “On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re spending all their time on these apps — they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.” Search is Google’s core competency, and search ads are Google’s bread and butter. Jobs is essentially saying that search is irrelevant on mobile devices, which seems to go against Google strategy with its Android platform.

Jobs spoke about the unified inbox on the iPhone, saying that “Customers have really wanted this…we’ve made it so you can have more than one Exchange account, as well. If you want to focus on just one account, we’ve added fast inbox switching.” Note that jobs didn’t mention Gmail. Probably not a coincidence.

In the question and answer portion of the presentation, Jobs said emphatically, “We do not have plans to be a worldwide ad agency. We don’t know a lot about advertising, but we’re learning. We tried to buy AdMob, but Google snatched them up because they didn’t want us to have them, so we bought another smaller company, Quattro. But we’re babes in the woods.” Although playing innocent, Jobs was clearly shedding light on Google’s motivations with purchasing AdMob (which honestly sounds like a fight between two toddlers over a toy-a very expensive toy).

Jobs points out that Apple decided to buy a “smaller company” in contrast to Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob. The announcement of iAds comes at a time when there are reports that the FTC is planning to block the Google-AdMob deal, because of anti-trust issues. Google bought the biggest player in the mobile advertising space, and is now being intensely examined for it. And of course, Apple also coincidentally announced its innovative, foray into the mobile advertising world (which is a multi-billion dollar market), just as Google faces regulatory hurdles which may curtail their involvement in the space.

Of course, Apple’s iAds could ends up being superior to the search ads Google has made a living off of. But Apple stepping in means that Google and AdMob officially have competition from one of the world’s largest technology companies in the mobile space, which could be good news for Google’s probable case against the FTC.

Photo Credit/Flickr/KWDesigns

Medialets, an advertising and analytics startup, bet big on the iPhone early, rolling out its universal SDK at the launch of the App Store two years ago. And the startup just launched a universal SDK that works with the iPad. And the company’s Apple-centric strategy has paid off; Medialets is one of the most widely used ad platforms and counts NPR, CNN and Fox as clients. Today, the startup is moving in a new direction, announcing a Rich Media Ad SDK for the Android platform, allowing publishers and developers to seamlessly switch between ad networks and first-party ad servers.

With the Android SDK, Medialets allows advertisers to create and deliver the mobile specific ads across both Android devices and iPhones. Similar to the universal SDK for iPhone and iPad, the Android SDK will allows publishers to modify and change their ad tags from various networks without having to update their app. As the Android platform continues to grow, more and more mobile ad networks are launching Android specific platforms, making Medialets offering appealing. The SDK works with any first or third party ad sever, network or mediator, including AdMob tags.

As we’ve written in the past, Medialets promises rich media and display advertising on mobile phones that provides deeper engagement with users. In fact, engagement is a primary measurement that the ad platform focuses on when determining the success of its advertising campaigns. But developers and advertisers may be more beholden to click-through rates, which Medialets claim are between 1 and 8 percent. However, eight percent seems a bit high, considering that other rich media mobile ad platforms, including Greystripe and AdMob, are seeing between 1 and 2 percent, in terms of click-through rates.

But Medialets has seen considerable success with its universal SDK offering, most recently striking a deal with The New York Times to use the startup’s rich media ad units for the Times’ iPad app. With the popularity of Medialets’ universal product, I imagine that other mobile ad networks will develop their own universal SDKs in due time.

AdMob, the mobile advertising unit bought by Google last year for a whopping $750 million, is upgrading its platform today. The company is launching new SDK’s for Android, Flash Lite and iPhone platforms and is also rolling out a number of new publisher tools, including a new publisher dashboard, an enhanced Reporting UI, a new Reporting API and Server Side SDK Controls.

The new Android SDK allows for expandable canvas and multi-panel banner advertisements on Android devices, with the updated iPhone SDK featuring performance enhancements and additional server side flexibility. The new Flash Lite SDK, which is in beta, enables monetization with CPC text ads. And AdMob is rolling out a new adaptive mobile ad unit, which allows for a banner sizes ad unit to remain a constant size as consumers pinch and scroll through a Web site that’s designed for a PC screen on their mobile device.

New publisher tools include a enhances Publisher Dashboard with a customizable interface for publishers to view all the key statistics for their mobile Web sites and various applications in one location. AdMob has rolled out a better Reporting UI and now allows publishers and advertisers to build their own tools and dashboards via a new reporting API. Other additions include Server Side SDK Controls, which gives publishers the ability to dynamically control the display and format of the ads in their applications; and AdWhirl (which AdMob bought) for iPhone and Android applications.

In a recent survey AdMob found that 31 percent of developers in its network are working across multiple mobile platforms today and almost half (47 percent) said they plan on developing on more than one platform in the next six months. Other findings from the survey include:

AdMob also released some interesting stats from the app developers the company works with. The advertising network says that more than 70 percent of iPhone developers plan to develop apps for the Android platform over the next six months and close to half of Android developers (48 percent) plan to develop for iPhone. Developers were most satisfied with the iPhone platform and least satisfied with RIM. And 58 percent of developers said they currently develop mobile Web sites.

Google is currently awaiting approval for its deal to buy AdMob. We recently heard Google has been reaching out to mobile companies for help in getting the acquisition cleared by the FTC. Specifically, they’re asking select companies to write letters in support of the deal, which Google will then forward to the FTC.

Mobclix bought Heartbeat from app developer Enormego, which launched the software in January 2009. So far Heartbeat has tracked $25 million in paid application downloads with over 3,500 applications using the platform (55 percent of which are paid apps). Heartbeat’s offerings will be folded into Mobclix’s platform to offer Heartbeat’s software to both Android and iPhone app developers. Heartbeat’s sales analytics will be integrated with Mobclix ad revenue data to allows developers to have a visualization of all aspects of an application’s revenue including ad monetization, in-app purchase and paid models. While Heartbeat’s current service only caters to the iPhone app market, its technology will be adapted to serve Android apps as well.

The acquisition makes sense for Mobclix to boost its exchange’s offerings. Mobclix allows app developers to sign up with their ad inventory and ad networks bid for the spots based on age, gender, location, and other factors. The ads being served change automatically, based on which ad network is bidding the highest to reach the users of that particular app. It also lets advertisers buy across a variety of apps based on demographic, geo-targeting, and behavioral characteristics. The startup recently announced a deal to offer Nielsen’s ad targeting data into its ad exchange to enhance ad targeting.

With the acquisitions of AdMob by Google and Quattro Wireless by Apple , ad exchanges and networks like Mobclix, Greystripe and others are working hard to boost the appeal and strength of their products. But according to Gartner, the mobile advertising market will generate $13 billion in revenues by 2013, leaving plenty of possible revenue to go around.