Since Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless in January, both parties have been keeping quiet on plans for Madison Avenue domination, but now according to a report from MediaPost, Apple is preparing to announce its next big thing – “a new personalized, mobile advertising system” which will go by the underwhelming name of “iAd” on April 7th. The article speculates that the service could be heavily focused on location-aware advertising, though that angle could hit some snags as apparently Google holds the patents for this functionality.

A Gizmodo tipster sent a photo of Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt having a nice, civilized time at Calafia in Palo Alto earlier today, sort of taking a bit of steam out of the idea that they’ve ended their “beautiful friendship.” Now, call us cynical, but we’re willing to bet the two ventured into this very public place together just to disprove the recent rumors of the failed relationship.

The launch of iAd could introduce a new frontier for battle between Apple and Google who have now been competing across a variety of segments including the mobile OS and mobile phone handset businesses. With iAd, Apple could be taking on Google in a segment where the latter heavily dominates. More importantly, Apple could be adding a much needed additional revenue stream for the company.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out moving ahead. MediaPost speculates that iAd could offer geography targeted advertising to app developers. Our readers might recall a recent Apple announcement that iPhone apps that pull the users’ location data for the sole purpose of advertising may not be approved. With iAd, Apple could now be offering a viable alternative for app developers who wish to geographically target their users with ads.

Interestingly though, Google is known to own the patent for location based adverting technology. The move would put them squarely up against Google which was largely built on advertising revenue and has had their own plans to move into the mobile space. In fact, Google’s acquisition of Admob has been described as a defensive move to keep the company out of Apple’s hands.

Do you think iAd will be able to compete with Google Adsense? Share your thoughts in the comments below.