RIM Announces New Advertising Program and In-App Purchacing

One of the many announcements made at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference is a new ad partner program that allows app creators to monetize their apps right away. The BlackBery Advertising Service will plug in ads from Jumptap, Lat49, Millennial Media, Navteq, 1020 Placecast, Quattro Wireless and Sympatico.ca – an impressive initial list, but I’m wondering where Google Mobile ads stand, and if their own program stands on its own just fine for BlackBerry devs. Ads offered through this program can do all sorts of stuff, like click-to-call, launching the address book or browser, or find a program in App World.

A related update on the transaction front are in-app purchases. That means you can buy new levels for a game you’re really digging, or buy songs from on-device music stores (7digital comes to mind), and similar kinds of microtransactions. Yeah, it sounds suspiciously familiar to the iPhone 3.0 announcement, but it offers BlackBerry developers some added flexibility in how they make their money.

The new ad service and in-app purchacing goes live in 2010, complete with SDKs. Keep an eye on the newly redesigned Developer Zone for more info.