Earlier this week, Google announced it was ramping up its mobile advertising initiative to include several international markets.  According to News24, those markets, which include China, Australia, France, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, should begin seeing advertisements when they perform internet searches using Google on their mobile devices.

Last week I reported on Yahoo's new banner-based mobile advertising campaign.  Yesterday brought the news of Microsoft's Live Search + Sprint mobile alliance.  While Google has already been testing mobile based ads, until now those ads where more geographically isolated.  With Google's announcement this week, you really get a feel for the momentum behind mobile advertising.

The mobile sector is really heating up not only in regard to advertising, but also in capability.  Keeping up with new announcements and new services for mobile is almost a full-time affair.  The next few weeks and months should be quite interesting.

Do I even need to mention what this means for you, the online marketer?  If you haven't already, it's time to seriously… I mean seriously… start thinking about your mobile advertising options.