The most important ad for a company or brand is its Website. So why not use that Website to generate ads? Dapper, a startup that can create a feed from any Website, is applying its technology to generate contextual, display ads from the constantly changing content on an advertiser’s own site.

The new service is called MashupAds. It is currently in private beta. The first 150 TechCrunch readers to sign up here will get an invite (mention TechCrunch in the comments)>

Everyone from Google to Yahoo is working on contextual display ads in an attempt to make display ads as relevant as contextual text ads. Like those efforts, MashupAds takes its cues from the content on the page where the ad is being served. So if you are researching what to do in Chicago on Fodor’s, you will get display ads for hotel rooms in Chicago. Where Dapper takes a step further is that the creative content in those ads are pulled directly from the relevant portion of the advertiser’s Website. Website is the ad (even on other sites).Source:TechCrunch

When it comes to charging for mobile apps, payments usually have to go through either the carriers or one of the emerging mobile app platforms such as Apple or Google’s Android. The problem with charging for an iPhone app through iTunes is that Apple takes 30 percent. A startup called Billing Revolution wants to charge about one tenth as much for a seamless, mobile one-click shopping experience. Already available on other phones, Billing Revolution is announcing availability today for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps.

Once a consumer signs up to pay for things through Billing Revolution, he is presented with an Amazon-like one-click payment option no matter what app is using it. (Didn’t Amazon patent that?). Billing Revolution charges a 3.5 percent transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction.

Source:TechCrunch

When the economy takes a hit, so do cell phone sales. Last quarter, mobile phone sales in the U.S. dropped 15 percent to 32 million units, according to market research firm NPD Group. But in hard times, the strongest brands also take share. And that is exactly what Apple did.

The 6.9 million iPhones it sold last quarter catapulted the $200 device into the top spot among all cell phones, even beating out the much cheaper and still-popular Motorola Razr. (Yes, they still sell that thing. They just don’t make any money off of it.)

The milestone for the popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) represents a 10% growth in 10 months and shows signs of slowing. If you consider the fact that the online game debuted in November 2004 and took only six months to go from 9 million to 10 million subscribers, you can conclude that it took Blizzard much longer to add this last million subscribers to its user base than in the past (the company announced it reached the 10 million mark in January 2008, up from 9 million in July, 2007). Source:TechCrunch

Motorola’s new co-CEO Sanjay Jha has a plan to save the beleaguered mobile handset maker: go all-in on Google’s Android mobile operating system. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (behind the pay wall):

The rumor is that Motorola will focus all of its efforts around three core operating systems for its phones, with Android becoming the central platform for “mid-tier” phones with Internet capability. The other two operating systems it will support will be Windows Mobile on the high end and its own P2K on the low end. In other words, Android phones will become its bread and butter.

Yahoo started out the year with layoffs, and it is going to end the year with more. The layoffs have been expected ever since Yahoo hired hatchet men from Bain & Co. to come help with the downsizing. The exact number of layoffs is still not known—between 1,000 and 3,000 are the numbers being discussed. During its earnings conference call on Tuesday, Yahoo is expected to announce how many people it will let go. In addition, operating budgets across the board are expected to be cut 15 percent.

In January, Yahoo laid off 1,000 people, and all year it has been suffering from a major drain of talent. But it still has plenty of employees—about 14,000. Getting rid of another 10 percent or so would have a meaningful financial impact by lowering expenses, but it would also lower morale.Source:TechCrunch

Motorola, which is recruiting as many as 350 people to work on Android phones, is gearing up to make its first one:the Android Social Smart Phone. Last week, Android Guys spotted a job posting for the project, and now BusinessWeek has more details, including a mention of the Motorola job posting pictured at left on Monster looking for an Android application developer. If the people pictured in the ad to represent Motorola employees are any indication, embarrassing dance moves are a plus, but not required.

According to BusinessWeek, Motorola is putting $50 million into its Android project, which is being run by a team from Good Technology, a mobile e-mail company that Motorola bought in 2006. The first phone won’t come out until the second quarter of next year, it will have a touch screen like the iPhone and a slide-out keyboard like the HTC T-Mobile G1 launching on Wednesday, but will look more like the Motorola Krave. It is also expected to be cheaper than the G1’s $180 price.

The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won’t last ling. Next year, the iPhione will see some serious competition from Google’s Android platform. Of course, T-Mobile will start selling the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC, on October 22. But other cell phone manufacturers are gearing up for a major Android push.

The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.

This same source has also seen people from Nokia and Verizon at a recent Android developer conference.

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