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Cologne, Germany-based Communology has received "several million dollars" in a second round of funding. The lead investor was Munich Venture Partners and existing investors S-VC, Kreditanstalt Wiederaufbau and founders Thomas Kahler and Frank Bell participated. The seven-year old mobile marketing and software firm didn't disclose the exact terms, but said the capital will be used to expand into more countries and further develop social communities and instant messaging services. ( Release ). Join us for EconMusic Sep. 23 in London featuring a Mobile Music panel with Nokia Music’s Tom Erskine, Sony BMG’s Ian Henderson, Vodafone UK’s Tom McLennan and O2’s Julian Zmood discussing the exciting future of this sector. Register at http://contentnext.com/econmusic .

GetJar , which distributes free mobile applications to consumers on the Internet and over the phone, said it is branching out its business by building application storefronts for wireless carriers. A few months ago, that would have been unheard of because carriers typically want to own the relationship with their subscribers. But with the success of Apple's ( NSDQ: AAPL ) App store, which Steve Jobs said made $30 million in its first four weeks, copycats are really starting to take off. For example, earlier this month, I reported that T-Mobile will create an open storefront this Fall that would allow developers to sell their applications freely to their subscribers, and yesterday Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) announced the Android Market, a store for Android phones when they become available later this year. Of course, there's other app stores too, including Handango, which sells apps to smartphone users. When I met up with Bill Scott, GetJar Network's VP of sales and business development in Seattle this week, he said GetJar is seeing the same trend and is starting to work with carriers to distribute free apps on their decks. The numbers are convincing. So far, GetJar claims that consumers have downloaded 300 million applications in total from its site, with a monthly average of about 13 million downloads worldwide and more than 500,000 in the U.S. It distributes everything from Google Maps and Yahoo's ( NSDQ: YHOO ) Go to nifty, but also less useful items, such as Disco Light, which makes your phone flash, and Battery Drainer, which makes your phone flash and beep until it's dead. Adult entertainment is also fair game. The company initially had no intentions of being an app store, but Founder Ilja Laurs of Lithuania stumbled into it. As a game developer, he always had a hard time getting his games tested. One day he posted it on a Web site, asking people to download it for free and report any bugs (That also explains the company's name...Jar is the suffix...

Heavily-backed mobile advertising firm Rhythm New Media , based in Mountain View, CA, has pulled out of UK, and closed its offices there, according to NMA , citing sources. The pull out is surprising considering the company is UK's largest supplier of pre-roll mobile video advertising and handles ad sales for operators 3, Orange and T-Mobile...it has also been touting its deals with these UK operators for the last year or so. It has also announced deals with music labels and companies such as CBS ( NYSE: CBS ), EMI, ITN, Ministry of Sound and Sony ( NYSE: SNE ) BMG. The reason? High CPMs charged by the company prevented the uptick. Of course mobile video is still very nascent with no discernible explosion in video consumption as predicted by experts. RNM received big second round in 2006: $18 million, led by Carlyle Venture Partners. It was seed funded by Rembrandt Venture Partners. Lightspeed and Morgenthaler co-led the first round in July 2005. More as we hear more… Update : ME reports it has pulled out of India as well, to focus on U.S. market . Related 3 UK Launches On-Portal Ad-Funded Content Offer Mobile Ad Firm Rhythm NewMedia Receives $18 Million Second Round Funding Mobile Ad Firm Rhythm NewMedia Gets Funding EMI Music Trials Ad-Supported Mobile Video Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .

So what's holding back mobile advertising? Online marketing and e-commerce research and consulting firm E-Consultancy has an interesting interview with Chris Smith, the online marketing manager, of Autoglass , one of the UK's largest vehicle glass replacement companies. Smith decided to take a punt with mobile advertising without the help of an agency and his experiences, (which I suspect are probably very typical at this early stage) of stumbling around and discovering things haphazardly show you what a long way mobile search and display advertising have to go. Being an online marketing manager, Smith was actually quite intrigued with mobile, and what mobile advertising might do for his company. Last year, he spent £2000 ($4000) knocking up a stripped down mobile (.mobi) site and for the last few months he's been watching as the traffic trickles in, and how his mobile advertising efforts in both search and display are panning out. As it turns out, the biggest hurdle for him has been his inability to track traffic. Smith: "...We only really actively started promoting it in April. This was because initially, we had great trouble finding a way of tracking traffic to it. I didn't want to spend money on advertising if I couldn't measure the result, and what people were doing on the site." Smith also reiterates a complaint about Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Analytics that has surfaced before . "Obviously [it] is not really geared up for mobile as it uses JavaScript, which most mobiles are not geared up to handle. It would tell us we had 100% direct visitors and so on, but it wouldn't give me any breakdown on where those visitors were coming from. It was obvious it wasn't really a workable solution for mobile." Smith eventually resolved the tracking problem by using Bango's mobile analytics software. Meanwhile, despite the early hiccups, Smith says he plans to do more with mobile advertising, including doing paid search on Google...

WPP Group's Wunderman, which has been reforming itself into a digital shop over the past year, has taken an unspecified, majority stake in Kassius, a Paris-based ad shop focused on mobile. The eight-year-old independent has roughly 40 large corporate clients and claimed €5.3million with gross assets of €2.8million, as of the end of last September. WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell has often stressed his bullishness on mobile advertising, especially in Europe and Asia. The investment in Kassius, which offers services related to design and production, in addition to strategic planning, is designed help WPP in its mobile efforts. Release Related WPP's Wunderman Buys Chinese Digital Ad Network Agenda Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .

France-based European online media firm Hi-Media has now extended its reach in mobile markets and has bought out local mobile market firm Mobile Trend . The deals includes a total consideration of 7 million euros, paid in cash, with two earn-outs to come depending on the company's profitability in 2008 and 2009. In 2007, Mobile Trend posted sales of 4.1 million euros and an operating profit of 0.9 million euros, and it expects strong business growth in 2008. The company transaction valuation multiples should be between 8 to 9 times MT's operating profit for the current financial year, it said. Mobile Trend was founded in 2003, is a French specialist in mobile Internet marketing and in micropayments by SMS. The two companies had been working together for the last four years, and with this deal, MT's contribution enables Allopass, Hi-Media's micro-payment business, to firm up its business in the SMS segment. More details on the deal here . Earlier this year Hi-Media bought US-based online photo sharing site Fotolog.