Welcome to PGN's Tech News Bytes, a Phonecasting.com presentation of the latest tech headline news affecting the podcasting and mobile space. Here is our handpicked headline news byte story for Monday, May 21st, 2007.

Unquestionably, the already huge mobile advertising market is poised to grow at a phenomenal rate in the next few years. The price tag already exceeds $500 million and that figure will be dwarfed very soon due to new technologies and the ubiquity of more sophisticated mobile phones.

There are many industry executives who predict the demand for mobile advertising is finally at hand, after years of high hopes and previous failures to attract a mass market.

"I think mobile is one of the great growth opportunities," said Randy Falco, head of AOL, the Internet division of Time Warner Inc., which this week purchased mobile advertising company Third Screen Media.

"It will certainly be in the $4.5 to $5 billion range in terms of the marketplace (in five years)," he said, adding that estimates for the annual market now range from $500 million to $900 million.

"I think you need to be there. That's money that's coming from some place. It's coming from other media," Falco said.

Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive of WPP Group Plc said he sees mobile advertising as an interesting area, which has much growth ahead.

"My sense is that that is an area that is small but growing fairly rapidly," he said.

Strategy Analytics, one of the most cautious forecasters on mobile advertising market growth, has forecast that the global mobile advertising market will reach $574 million this year and grow almost three-fold by 2010.

For that reason, media firms, telecom operators, and major Internet players like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and the world's top cellphone maker, Nokia, are positioning their companies to snatch a share of this new mobile revenue stream.

The race is on…who will get the lion's share of the mobile advertising market? That is the question. There are obviously hundreds of companies in the hunt. One has to believe that industry giants like Google, Yahoo, Nokia, major carriers the world over like Sprint, Verizon, DoCoMo, Orange, TIM and others, will lead the pack. Only time will tell.