In the wake of receiving $4.5 million of Series B funding, mobile advertising company Smaato Inc. is optimistic about the state of the mobile industry.

Aeris Capital led the $4.5 million institutional round of funding, with an undisclosed partner and existing shareholders also participating. The capital will be used to hire new employees and to grow the company's global presence.

?Similar to the acquisition of AdMob by Google, what we see is that mobile has picked up much stronger and has been validated as a market,? said Ragnar Kruse, founder/CEO of Smaato, Hamburg, Germany. ?Last month we served more than 3 billion ad requests within our network, which we?ve built to 1,000 publishers, compared to 100 at the beginning of the year.

?Last year we had the crisis starting, and the question is now ?What do we see coming??? he said. ?We see a hot Q4?we are very bullish about next year.

?Mobile advertising has proven that it?s not just experimental anymore, therefore we see more and more companies with mobile as a dedicated budget?in 2010 brands will dedicate 15-to-20 percent of their digital spend to mobile, depending on the country and the region.?

Smaato describes itself as the largest mobile advertising optimizer for the mobile Web and mobile applications.

Mobile publishers, mobile developers, ad networks and carriers partner with Smaato to maximize mobile advertising revenue via aggregation of multiple mobile ad networks worldwide.

Smaato claims that its mobile advertising optimization and mediation platform can deliver ads in 215 countries across the mobile Web and within applications.

This new round of funding will help Smaato further expand its network of 33 ad networks, according to Mr. Kruse.

The mobile advertising market is growing rapidly and it has proved to be a profitable business even in recessionary periods.

Mr. Kruse said that Smaato has seen mobile advertising increase dramatically over the past 12 months.

?Mobile has specifics that don?t necessarily translate easily from digital to mobile such as managing latencies and response times to still deliver a good user experience on mobile,? Mr. Kruse said. ?For mobile, an international presence is important?as soon as you have great content, a great app, the content travels internationally very fast, so if you have a great app on the iPhone, you also need international coverage if you want to monetize it via advertising.

?Our growth strategy is clearly building out our international footprint and hiring more people,? he said. ?We have offices in Hamburg, Germany, Redwood Shores, California, as well as Boston, Montreal and Singapore.

?We see big growth and take-up in Europe and Asia, where we already have a lot of business, and we want to improve what we?re seeing there by being closer to those customers and expanding our international footprint.?