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Millennial Media's April 2011 report, a snapshot of the company's large mobile advertising network and the trends it contains, found this month that ad impressions on iOS devices have increased by 47% since January of this year. At the same time, Android impressions have grown just 19%.

And when breaking down the revenue generated by all apps, iOS apps accounted for 50% of revenue, while Android accounted for 39%. This was a 6% month-over-month increase for Apple.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a new type of advertising that highlights the activity of a user's friends who have interacted with a given brand on the site.

For example, if your cousin checked into an Applebee's on Facebook, the restaurant could buy an ad that highlights that fact on the right hand side of the page as you navigate the site.

Apple recently took actions to dissuade developers from participating in incentivized install programs, meaning programs that encouraged consumers to download new apps in return for virtual goods and other bonuses which could be used in mobile gaming and other apps. But while those changes may have negatively affected some companies' programs, for example, Tapjoy, it has led to opportunities for others.

Today, one of those hoping to benefit from the increasingly important marketing needs of app developers is Appia. It's launching a pay-per-install ad network that it says offers guaranteed ROI to developers. The service launched today at the 2011 AppNation conference in San Francisco.

Senators John Kerry, and John McCain introduced a bill to the Senate floor last week entitled "The Commercial Privacy Bill Of Rights" that would reform and codify how Internet user data could be used online.

On the surface, this seems like the type of altruistic bill that falls in to the no-brainer area of Congressional legislation. Privacy, protection, trust, accountability. All the good political buzzwords apply. Yet, it is not that simple. Data is the lifeblood of the Web and the use of consumer data and the bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce to have a significant hand in regulation of how data is collected and used by companies. Advertisers, innovators and consumer groups are concerned with the bill, not so much because of the wording of the legislation, but rather the amount of control it places in the hands of the FTC and whether or not that is necessary.

Twitter announced this afternoon that the Local Trends feature it announced in 41 cities and countries in January, 2010 has now expanded to 70 more places. Trending local topics are an easy way to discover people and conversations outside your own personal niche. The band Rise Against is playing in my town tonight, for example, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it had I not checked what's popular in Portland.

This near-tripling of venues for the consideration of what's hot seems likely to foreshadow a future when advertisers will be able to purchase trending topics on a local level. A more logical step, though, would be to try to fix the problems with location on Twitter. There's clearly something wrong with it as so few people append locations to their Tweets. Check out the screenshot below for some idea why.

Amazon has just announced that it's releasing a new Kindle: "Kindle with Special Offers." This version is $25 off the regularly priced e-reader (that is, for $114 instead of $139), because those "special offers" include advertising.

The e-books themselves won't have ads in them, but the home screen and the screensaver will. Sponsors for the first series of screensavers include Buick, Proctor & Gamble, and Visa.

Ads themselves hardly qualify as "special" and neither does the rather paltry discounted price. But to sweeten the deal, Amazon says there will be "special offers" available to these Kindle owners, including half-off Amazon Gift cards, discounted Audible books and Amazon mp3 albums, and a $10 credit when you buy one of 30 Kindle bestsellers with your Visa card.

The relationship between online search advertising and online sales can be easily quantified, and that's part of what makes Web advertising so powerful compared to its print and broadcast counterparts.

But can online ads lead to sales in the offline, bricks-and-mortar world? Google says yes.

Google has begun notifying users of its email system, Gmail, that "better ads" are on the way. Being sure to note that "ads in Gmail are fully automated" and that "no humans read your messages," the company announced that it will be using a process similar to that of Priority Inbox to bring users fewer, but more relevant, advertisements.

Can the company pull off more precise advertising without creeping out its user base?

We're highlighting eight diverse companies that announced venture capital investments today. Investors have made a wager on each of these companies, but the odds are only so good for the group. We want to know, readers, which one do you think is most likely to prove viable and change the world? We've got a photo-based social networking site (looks like another fun means of communication), a question and answer site where different folks from programmers to home cooks can get their questions answered, a web-based advertising platform and five more promising companies to pay attention to. We also reveal who interested you voted the most interesting out of yesterday's line up.

The popular VOIP service Skype will start displaying advertising in its Home tab beginning this week.

The company has just announced the change, insisting that, "the Skype experience is our first priority." The move to bring advertising to the Skype environment comes as the telephony company makes its move for a planned IPO this year. While Skype has an estimated 177 million active users, only around 8.1 million are paying subscribers. The addition of advertising will give the company another revenue stream.