The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported that Research In Motion (RIM) is “shopping for a mobile advertising network”, in order to provide it with access to a potentially lucrative new market. Apparently, the company has held talks with established player Millennial Media, but these have now stopped due to a disagreement about price — based on previous similar deals, Millennial is said to be looking for US$400 million–US$500 million, which RIM is unwilling to pay. The potential target says on its website that it “delivers the largest reach – 81 percent of the US mobile audience – through the largest mobile advertising network in the US.”

RIM is the latest of the industry giants to be eyeing the mobile advertising space, following Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless and Google’s purchase of AdMob – the WSJ said that RIM believes that the acquirers overpaid in these deals, leading it to restrict its valuation of Millennial Media. Millennial has also previously been suggested to be an acquisition target of Microsoft. While the mobile advertising industry has been nascent for some time, momentum has been building recently, catalysed by Apple’s recently-launched iAd service. According to a recent MediaPost report, RIM’s BlackBerry platform has recently slipped to third place in Millennial Media’s table of ad impressions by platform, behind Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.