Google isn't giving up on messaging apps. "The Economic Times" reports today that the search giant is planning to launch its own mobile messaging app after Facebook came away with WhatsApp in a $19 billion acquisition earlier this year. Google had reportedly made an offer of $10 billion to buy WhatsApp, falling well short of Facebook's winning bid. The forthcoming Google app is likely to launch next year in India and other emerging markets -- with no login required as with other Google products, according to the report.

Facebook saw its mobile ad business take off with the introduction of app install ads, providing developers with a key new tool for pulling in new users. But a long-standing problem for developers has been the short shelf life of most apps. Many are used only a handful of times before disappearing from a user's phone screen. What's more, they have to contend with apps from the likes of Facebook, Google, and Pandora that dominate users' attention.

The mobile banner came in for another beating yesterday during a panel yesterday at the OMMA Display conference focused on the topic. The question is, what replaces it -- and how do you deliver higher quality ads at scale in mobile? One answer is native advertising -- which, at the basic level, takes the form of ads run in the stream of updates as on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites. That is likely to become a more dominant format as major social platforms like Facebook generate a growing share of their ad sales from mobile devices.