IDC’s Karsten Weide just released revised estimates the annual gross U. S. advertising revenue of the major mobile players. What’s interesting is that the Millennial Media was the clear leader in both revenues and in market share. The top spot is now owned by Google thanks to Ad Mob. That leaves Millennial Media (the former #1 now #2 player) available to the rest of the market to bid on as the next company to be acquired.

Here is the breakdown according to IDC:

Revenue Leaders
Numbers represent the estimated 2009 U.S. gross mobile advertising revenue (including traffic acquisition costs [TAC]) for the major nine players and for Google and Admob combined:

• Google & AdMob: $59 million (AdMob: $31 million and Google: $28 million)
• Millennial Media: $35 million
• Yahoo!: $29 million
• Microsoft: $23 million
• Quattro Wireless: $20 million
• Jumptap: $18 million
• AOL: $7 million
• Nokia: $7 million

Market Share Leaders
2009 U.S. gross mobile advertising market shares figures based on IDC’s forecast for 2009’s total U.S. mobile advertising spend of $287 million:

• Google & Admob: 21% (AdMob: 11% and Google 10%)
• Millennial Media: 12%
• Yahoo!: 10%
• Microsoft: 8%
• Quattro Wireless: 7%
• Jumptap: 6%
• AOL: 2%
• Nokia: 2%
• Other: 31%

According to the IDC report

The revenue numbers are based on the number of ad impressions served by these entities (either as published by them, or estimated based on their audience reach and an industry-average number of impressions per user) multiplied by an estimated average CPM rate (cost per 1000 ad impressions) for each company.

Google’s Admob acquisition – which we believe will face anti-trust scrutiny but will be passed – puts the company in a comfortable lead, which Yahoo! and Microsoft could only equalize short term by acquiring other ad networks such as Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless or Jumptap. How much would these be valued at?

Let us look at the revenue multiple Google paid for AdMob. What is AdMob’s total revenue? The above estimate only outlines AdMob’s U.S. revenue. We do not know how much revenue AdMob generates.

If we perform similar estimates for Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless and Jumptap, and if we further assume that Yahoo! and Microsoft will pay as high multiples, that would put valuations for these three companies at roughly $600 million, $500 million and $300 million, respectively. Business development
executives at Yahoo! and Microsoft have their jobs cut out for themselves.

[Disclosure: Millennial Media sponsors SiliconANGLE. –mrh]