The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has announced the release of a whitepaper on rich media mobile advertising.

The MMA used the paper to create a definition, which it refers to as ‘Rich Media Mobile Ad Units’ – interactive and/or non-interactive ad units displayed on a mobile web page and/or in a mobile application that offers inclusion of streaming video content or animated GIF within the ad unit, sound or a richer interactive feature set than basic mobile click-through.

According to the whitepaper, the MMA estimates that advertisers spent about $1.7 billion on mobile marketing in 2009, which will grow to $2.16 billion in 2010.

Rohit Dadwal, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific, said that the smartphone market is estimated to be at 52 million devices, indicating a tech-savvy consumer group that wants to get the most out of their mobile experiences.

“With increasing penetration of these feature-rich smartphones, marketers have now started to increase mobile ad capabilities and provide richer content on mobile devices. The purpose of this whitepaper is to educate the industry about the rich media mobile ad units that are available for use in mobile advertising. We aim to encourage experimentation with these rich media mobile ad units, and to influence future Rich media mobile advertising guidelines,” explained Dadwal.