The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is planning to look into Apple Inc.'s tactics in the mobile advertising market, and decide whether the company's actions will result in less competition in the growing market, Bloomberg reported Friday.

This week, Apple banned mobile ad networks from collecting information, such as location, to give more highly targeted advertising, according to paidContent. Apple bought mobile advertising platform Quattro Wireless in January, after the company found itself increasingly competing with Google in the mobile market. Last November, Google announced it would buy AdMob, which competes with Quattro.

The regulatory body is concerned that the conditions "Apple was placing on software developers and advertisers for the company's iAd program," according to Bloomberg. The investigation is affecting Google as well, as they have caused the FTC last month to postpone a decision on whether to approve Google's buyout of AdMob for US$750 million.

"The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well," AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui wrote in a blog post, according to paidContent.

However, "the way Apple wrote the terms doesn't seem to preclude most ad networks from collecting data, just mostly companies that also have a mobile handset business, like Google, or potentially Microsoft or Nokia," noted the paidContent article, posted by MediaGuardian.