When we compiled our list of the most important people in mobile advertising — the Mobile Power List 2012 — it contained one depressing anomaly: They were all men.

While there are plenty of influential women in the business, most of them have CEOs above them who are male. When women are CEOs, it tends to be at smaller companies they founded themselves.

So we set out to find and rank the most powerful women in the mobile ad business.

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First, we asked our readers to submit nominations. To ensure the nominations weren't self-serving, we also asked you to submit two nominations from other companies, rivals or colleagues.

This is not a complete list of every influential woman in mobile advertising, obviously. We chose the women with larger client bases, greater revenues (or spending) further reach, larger staffs and more innovative ideas than their peers. There are plenty of women who could have been named to the list, but because they work for companies where there is a peer company that employs an even more powerful woman, we didn't include them here. We also discriminated against companies that aren't specific about their revenues, employee headcounts and user reach.

The result is a list that counts not just the most important women in the business, but the women who are also the most prominent for their company type. (For further detail, we discuss the methodology behind the rankings at the end of the list.)