Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and über producer Mark Burnett have forayed into so many different successful projects, it’s hard to imagine they could dream up a challenge that they had not yet pursued.

Sure enough, the duo, after having worked together on a number of projects in the past including “The Contender,” decided to see if they could formulate an interactive and immersive experience that not only surrounded the release of a movie as a promotional run-up, but that was geared towards kids and their families. The upcoming Dreamworks film, “Flushed Away,” provided the perfect opportunity, and the companies brought AOL on board to help create the “‘Flushed Away’ Underground Adventure.”

The resulting project is a single-player, immersive online game that includes customized animation from Dreamworks, marking the first time the company has undertaken such a task for one of their films. It also features groundbreaking, real-time 3D environments and physics simulation.

“Flushed Away,” an animated feature set beneath the streets of London, is based on the premise of a pet mouse that is flushed down the toilet into a vast metropolis populated by a world of colorful rodent characters. Using these characters, who are voiced by such big names as Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, and Sir Ian McKellen, along with settings and storylines from the film, the experience features a mix of action and puzzle games.

Every day, beginning on Thursday, October 5th and continuing for roughly twenty-four days, a new challenge will be released that kids and their parents can play for digital prizes, like downloads, printables, and audio clips from the film. When players have completed the entire twenty-four game experience, they are entered into a grand prize sweepstakes that includes offerings like vacations and shopping sprees.

Since the film is geared towards a younger demographic that often requires parental supervision, one would expect that the game correspondingly targets those groups. According to David Eilenberg, Executive Producer at Mark Burnett Productions, the game is geared towards such an audience because of other statistics as well. “Those are two of the biggest online gaming audiences on AOL,” he tells ADOTAS. “So, kids 8-12, which is also who we think the movie’s going to most appeal to, and then to their moms.”

Perhaps one of the most prominent female-focused discussions was a workshop offered on both days of the conference sponsored by BabyCenter. The workshop, entitled “What Was Old is New Again: A 10 year Retrospective Snapshot of Women Online from User Group to Online Juggernaut,” was led by Jasmine Kim, Chief Marketing Officer for BabyCenter, and Jessica Lilie, Director of Market Research for the company. Both women have been on the tech side of marketing for around ten years and were essentially female pioneers in the early days of Silicon Valley, leading them to categorize themselves as “early adapters.”

At BabyCenter, they routinely examine new and efficient ways to market to women, but for Mixx, it seemed appropriate to take a look back. Days prior to the BabyCenter workshop, Kim explained to ADOTAS that even though the Internet has been around for a while, many of the titans like eBay and Yahoo are celebrating their tenth year, a significant milestone.

In the early days of online marketing, people never really discussed how to actually market or talk to consumers. There was the assumption that if a product was built, people would come. While Kim feels a portion of that mentality remains, today the industry has become less product-oriented and more service-oriented. Her discussion with Lilie at Mixx will examine exactly how improvements in marketing to women have come about and what remains to be fixed.

Of particular interest in their dialogue is what makes women different as a target audience, and just how powerful of a demographic they really are. Both Ms. Lilie and Ms. Kim address the persistent stereotype of women being “technophobes” or “late adapters.”

Technical products and internet services have classically been geared towards the 18-35 year old male demographic based on the notion that women are wary of such technology. “We actually know that that [stereotype] is not the case because women have a different threshold or requirement of what makes them want to use the product or service. [Their concern is] that it’s user friendly to them in a way that speaks to them,” Ms. Kim says. To support this theory, the duo will be discussing case studies that showcase how some companies have successfully communicated with women, which Kim describes as a “juggernaut, critical segment of the marketplace.”

To depict just how powerful women can be as technological consumers, Ms. Kim uses the examples of Webvan, one of the first online grocery delivery services, and Purple Tie, an online dry cleaning service. Both services gave delivery and pickup times that spanned several hours, in the style typical of, say, the cable company. For busy working women and/or moms, there was no clear advantage to using those services. “It was basically offline service online without any clear benefits, efficiency or speed or matriculation,” Kim says. Considering that ninety-five percent of grocery purchasers are women, it’s no surprise that Webvan went out of business while Purple Tie now offers a 60-minute window.

For those attending the Mixx Expo, the “Deep Dive Sessions” offer several discussions regarding the mobile front. There are perhaps few speakers better acquainted with the world of wireless than Laura Marriott, Executive Director of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), who will be contributing to the discussion of “Research Perspectives on Mobile Marketing Opportunities.” ADOTAS recently had a brief chat with Laura to get the inside scoop about her background, her thoughts on mobile, and what she has in store for her Mixx session. Check her speech out yourself on September 25 at 4:45 pm.

Hi Laura. So just to get started, what is your background prior to the MMA, and what brought you to the association?

OK, so I am a Canadian, and I have been involved in high-tech for the last sixteen years of my career. About nine years ago when I was in Calgary, I got involved in telecom and in wireless, and just absolutely loved it. I have been at wireless startups in Canada, California, and Texas, and then here in Colorado in marketing, business development, and product roles.

At my last job, I was running the messaging business for Europe and Asia for a company called Intrado and I ended up becoming a member of the board for the MMA. So I actually sat on the board of directors. At that time, and that was only January of last year, January of ’05, the MMA was only twenty-eight members. In July, I talked to the Chairman and the Vice Chairman and we decided that I would take on the role of Executive Director and I started at the MMA in July of last year.

So the MMA is your primary focus right now?

Yes, I am the first full-time staff person of the MMA and we’ve grown the association from one full-time staff person, we now have four with a bunch of contractors. We have close to four hundred members worldwide, so up from twenty-eight last January, and we’re truly a global association today. So the number of initiatives and the number of things we’ve done have just greatly increased.

Tell me a little bit about your day-to-day responsibilities within the MMA as Executive Director.

If you think about our mission statement, one of our main initiatives is to educate and evangelize on using the mobile channel. So what does that mean? That means talking to agencies, so both traditional, digital, and mobile agencies about what the mobile channel can do for them. It’s educating brands on how to get involved.

And then it’s really talking to all members of the ecosystem about the power of the channel. You know, who are the partners they should select to get into mobile. It’s working with the committees which are made up of a number of volunteers to develop the guidelines and best practices around our space. So what are the rules that a brand or agency should follow in engaging the mobile channel. And then I do a lot of speaking. We actually have a big webinar today. So yeah, a lot of member interaction and communication as well.

Since the mobile industry is such a hotspot at the moment, are there certain trends that you are noticing a lot recently? Is there a particular direction that you foresee mobile heading towards?

I would say that a lot of emphasis of late has been put around mobile advertising as one of many areas, but we’re seeing uplift in text messaging campaigns, short code campaigns. We’re seeing a lot of energy and enthusiasm around mobile video and television. We’re also starting to see a lot of focus placed on mobile commerce. So, that means loyalty programs and ticketing and couponing, which are all ways that a brand can further improve their engagement model with their consumer. It’s really that we’re seeing roads across the mobile channel on every front.

Understandably, not all brands can tie in an activity, nor do they need to. The benefit of mobile marketing is that the audience is always accessible, regardless of time or place. However, sometimes the activities involved in the campaigns seem sort of, for lack of a better term, random. The latest offender is a joint venture between Virgin Mobile and Vibes Media. The result is a “text adventure game” in which teenage Virgin Mobile customers respond to questions and react to situations created by Vibes.

For me, such a “game” conjures up images of teens in a variety of situations with their heads locked forward in texting position, fingers frantically typing away. Those situations include everything from activities that could use a little entertainment, like long subway rides, to situations where texting is inappropriate, like class, and even to things that require the utmost attention, like crossing into oncoming traffic for example.

Oh, and the game’s title is the “Back-2-School Hook-Up Text Adventure Game,” and yes, that is “Hook-Up” in the romantic sense. So perhaps it’s not so much the strange choice of medium as it is what I believe to be Virgin Mobile/Vibes Media’s complete miss. The game (and I’m not sure where the “adventure” aspect comes in) challenges players to try to virtually “hook up” with their text-generating date, provided by Vibes. Each text message choice puts the player closer to hooking up or striking out. Responses to the choices are intended to be edgy like, “Rawr. He can’t hide how much he’s loving this. Shake those HIPS.” Sounds just like the dating advice we hope to pass onto our female youth.

The average path of texts, which ends in letting the player know their hook-up success, requires between twenty-five and fifty messages. Now, I enjoy texting, but that seems to exceed inbox capacity. When a player has completed a “date,” she (or I suppose the occasional he) gets a label like “Too Shy,” “Too Bold,” or even the profound “Playa Playa.” A tracker also provides some words of future dating wisdom. I’d imagine a mobile marketing provider would not be the authority on best dating practices, but that’s just me.

I can see this campaign as being amusing to those twenty-somethings out there on the dating scene, in that kind of “this is so dumb, but hey I wonder what it says about my skills….” sort of way, but for those learning the ropes of male-female interaction, this hardly seems like an intelligent choice. Dominick Tolli, VP of Mobile Data Services for Virgin Mobile USA, seems to feel differently, saying in a statement that, “It’s a brand new school year, there are new girls and guys to meet, and everyone’s anxious to test whether they’ve got game!” I wonder how much game one can really have with the mentality of “Hey, it worked on my Text Adventure Date.”

Perhaps this campaign is attractive to teens out there, particularly with its sweepstakes for five Virgin Mobile Stash Visa Pre-Paid Cards that come equipped with $500, but to an individual that frequently reads about mobile marketing campaigns, and what I like to think of as a tactful human being, this campaign brings the mobile medium a few steps backwards.

Virgin and Vibes have undertaken other promotions that involve text messaging, picture messaging, ringtones, and trivia challenges, and perhaps they should stick to such schemes and avoid advising on social relations. Virgin Mobile customers can only play the “Hook-Up Text Adventure Game” until October 2nd, at which point participants should look for a better source of “hook-up” inspiration.

Since users spend so much time looking at content, there was clearly an advantage in utilizing content pages for advertisements. But banner and text ads were easy to avoid, while other mediums could be intrusive. Yoav Shaham saw an opportunity to do something different with the content pages to include advertising that not only refrained from invading the online experience, but more importantly, was relevant.

Already fond of working with numbers, Shaham summoned his experience with computers, business, and contextual advertising at eZula to launch Kontera, an in-text advertising solution. In short, Kontera developed a system that finds contextually relevant keywords on a publisher’s web page in real-time and automatically matches them to relevant ads presented as in-text sponsored keyword links. Users view the ads only when they mouse-over, making it an extension of the content, and the degree of relevancy makes the user more likely to click on a link and act on the offer.

Early last month, Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers took notice of Kontera’s highly technological approach in light of scarce advertising real estate and the high demand for online advertising inventory. The companies entered into a deal to provide Kontera with $7 million in funding, reflecting a growing investor interest in the online advertising space. Shaham recently spoke with ADOTAS to give us a rundown of just how Kontera began quietly inserting relevant ads, what he feels about in-text competitors, and why relevancy is king.

So, to start off, how did you get into online advertising?

We got into online advertising when we saw that the problem with search is that users are only using search 5% of the time when they are online. The other 95% [spent engaging with content] was not utilized well enough for advertising. So we decided that there is a huge opportunity here to get into a new market and it started with in-text advertising.

What were you doing prior to Kontera?

I was on the management team of eZula [a contextual advertising solutions provider for online advertisers and publishers]. Prior to that, I studied computers and business at [school].

So what would you say in-text advertising brings that is different from other advertising approaches? How does it have a greater appeal?

That’s a great question. In-text advertising basically answers a need for the three types of players that we see in our market, whether it is the advertisers that are having [supply shortages] for their needs, or whether it is the publishers that are looking to make incremental dollars, which means making more dollars on their pages.

We allow them to make additional revenue from the webpage because in-text advertising can reside together with Adsense, with the banners of other players, and just provide additional dollars. Then there are the users, of course, [whom] we allow to see relevant information, and relevant advertising while they’re browsing the Web, when the companies provide them with an additional way of interrupting the content online.

IKEA tapped the creative forces at Forsman + Bodenfors, who created a kitchen site for the retailer last year, to show consumers the possibilities of an IKEA closet. “We wanted to inspire people to care about their closets as much as any other part of their home, and demonstrate that closets are as much an expression of individual style as the fashion stored within,” Mathias Appelblad, Web Director at F+B, tells ADOTAS. The result is “a five story ‘dollhouse’ in which people can peek in on five different characters who have created closets to fit their unique needs,” he describes.

Upon arriving at the site, which launched on August 17th, a visitor is invited to “Kom In I Garderoben,” or come into the closet, and can select which closet to explore via integrated video material. Since it is IKEA after all, the characters are quite quirky in their mannerisms and design choices. The closet-owner on the fifth floor, for example, “is based on Morgan Freeman’s character in Bruce Almighty,” Appelblad says. The character, clad all in white and surrounded by his ubiquitously white belongings, struggles to find what to wear when a visitor clicks on one of the three navigating images at the bottom of the screen.

Appelblad explains that, “Since IKEA has such a wide range of styles we were almost totally free in the scripting phase to create scenarios that could highlight the different features of the closets. This gave us an opportunity to create slightly off-beat characters with a high entertainment value.”

Other characters include a female cat-owner who favors a pastel color scheme, a disco fanatic, a young bowling champion, and a family that strolls in and out of the closet while the father irons clothing in the background.

Entertainment value aside, the diverse character selection actually mirrors the spectrum of IKEA’s target group, which in Sweden, Appelblad says, “includes just about everyone.” He also describes a general skew towards women in developing the site and the importance of including a family with children in one of the closets, since both comprise important IKEA demographics.

Along with the various closet-owners, the microsite, part of an integrated TV, newspaper, magazine, and Web campaign, includes a link to a closet-planning tool and an IKEA purchasing stream. Additional interactive components are planned to be added within the next few weeks.

While its larger purpose is to make closets a decorating priority in Sweden and “demonstrate a number of unique storage solutions,” viewers can’t seem to get enough of the amusing site. “Only a few days after we released people started sending us fan e-mails and it appeared on numerous blogs and forums,” Appelblad says.

Swedish and international fans alike may enjoy the Forsman + Bodenfors creation, but Appelblad emphasizes that there is in fact a different approach to creating campaigns for a European audience than for an American one. “In most cases messages have different cultural contextual meanings in different markets, and thus will be applicable on some markets, but very seldom on all markets globally,” he explains. In the case of IKEA, home decoration may play different roles, as is seen in the contrasting importance of closet space, and national style aesthetics differ as well.

Appelblad says that a number of different countries have expressed interest in adapting the IKEA microsite, which is set to run for at least one year, perhaps revealing that this campaign may somewhat transcend cultural boundaries. The agency is also currently working on an English version to include audiences both here and abroad. Until that version is ready, Americans can wander through the IKEA closet “dollhouse” at http://www.kominigarderoben.se/, and be amused regardless of their taste in décor.

So, you’re wandering the streets of an unfamiliar neighborhood looking for a good bar. You are reluctant to take your chances, since you’ve been to one bad dive after another, but the night is still young. If only there was some feature on your handheld device that would direct you quickly and easily to the best bars in the area…

Well, for lucky Londoners, Coors-owned Carling beer is giving them just that. Marvellous Mobile has created a WAP site for “Britain’s Number One Lager” that features, among other interactive elements, a Barfinder. The site uses location-based services after a postcode has been entered to allow bar-hoppers to find the nearest Carling-serving pubs right on their mobiles. The site provides details on each bar, including type, quality of beer, and level of service. Users can then contribute to this information once he or she has visited the pub.

The original Barfinder was developed on the Carling website, but, according to Marvellous’ Thea Frost, Project Coordinator for the WAP site, Carling wanted to make the information more immediate. “They wanted to take that and bring it into pubs so people can interact with the brand when they’re actually in pubs and drinking and on the streets looking for bars,” she tells ADOTAS. While it is currently limited to London, the Barfinder will eventually serve pub crawlers all over the UK.

Frost says that a growing number of people are using the Barfinder, but all of the features on the WAP site, launched on August 15th, are reeling in impressive results. A downloadable Java game called “Can-it” is another popular element of the site. “The object is to collect Carling beer cans for points, and to smash non-Carling beer cans,” Frost explains. “At the end of the game, players can submit their scores to a national leaderboard which is hosted on the WAPsite.”

WAP visitors also have the opportunity to download ringtones for 50p that will be updated every couple of months, and they can eventually download a video that will be added shortly. Since the site and its features are set to run indefinitely, new versions of the Java game are planned for the future. Frost says that the site will also be reviewed regularly to include new features and sections in the coming months.

The WAP site provides an extension for the Carling website with an identical music section that includes regularly updated music news. Advertising for the mobile promotion is limited to Carling.com, though a banner campaign may be developed eventually.

Visiting the WAP site on mobiles for pub info and entertaining games and accessories may seem rewarding enough to users, but participating in the features makes each participant a candidate for an even larger prize. In order to access the majority of the WAP content, users must register their name and birth date to become members, thus marking the beginning of a loyalty point system.

“Registering in itself gains points, and more points are awarded every time they visit the site, download ringtones/wallpapers/the Java game, rate a bar in Barfinder, or interact with the site in other ways,” says Frost. A viral, send-to-a-friend feature, where members enter the mobile number of a friend who is then invited to the site, also gains the member points. What do all of these points add up to? “At the end of each month,” says Frost, “the member with the most points wins a year’s supply of Carling.”

American beer fans may be up in arms that no such campaigns have come their way just yet, but based on research, Frost believes that Americans are still using mobile technology in a very different way than their European counterparts. “Mainly they just use their mobiles for voice calls and they don’t use them for actual texting or WAP,” she speculates. Data has shown that the trend may slowly be changing, but for now, it is certainly something that mobile marketing agencies in the US are keeping in mind when creating campaigns. In the UK, though, Frost is seeing development occur at a much faster rate and WAP use in general growing in popularity.

So if you happen to be wandering the streets of Londontown, text BEER to 83400 to find Carling-serving pubs and start racking up those points. If not, check out http://www.Carling.com and sit tight until a Barfinder comes to a city near you.

For its new SUV, the RDX, Acura wants to reach beyond the average automobile enthusiast. Car junkies might drool at the thought of turbocharged engines, super-handling all-wheel drive, updated transmissions and the like, but the RDX has a more urban, savvy driver in mind.

The vehicle incorporates technological innovations like a navigation system with voice recognition, real-time traffic, and Bluetooth capabilities for hands-free cell phone use, and to correspond with this technologically advanced Acura, the automaker has launched a marketing campaign through RPA that targets the tech-proficient consumer.On-air, outdoor, and print ads use tech-inspired taglines like “Turbo Search Engine” and “Wireless High Speed,” but of particular note is the image-tagging campaign that enables the targeted audience to use their fully-integrated mobile devices to be a part of the promotion.

When one of these “urban dwellers” sees an RDX print ad, he or she can take a picture with their handheld device and email it to win@acura.com. In return, customers will receive a message that connects them to a WAP page where they can purchase a free ringtone and discover how to enter a sweepstakes to attend the year’s biggest music event in LA.

If you consider yourself tech-savvy, but haven’t yet heard of this promotion, a few initial compatibility issues that have since been resolved might be to blame. More likely, though, is that perhaps you’re not as clued in as you may think. RPA’s Andy Van Aken, the brains behind the image-tagging element, tells ADOTAS that this campaign is largely intended to spread through a viral approach, something that the well-connected audience should know a lot about.

Members of Acura’s tech-forward crowd tend to “live with their Blackberries and their Treos and their things like that and in a lot of cases, that’s their whole lifeline,” Van Aken explains. He also feels that, while often getting their information through mainstream media, they tend to search for the latest and greatest things themselves. “They do things like go online for blogs and they seek things out. It’s not necessarily expected that things come to them,” Van Aken says.

To correspond with this exploratory nature, the image-tagging promotion emphasizes curiosity over mass marketing. Information about the image-tagging aspect will be fed into blogs and will be featured on some promotional pages and sites of Acura’s general media partners, as well as third-page ads in select magazines. According to Van Aken, “You will see some banners probably around, but it is kind of a discovery-type medium.” The campaign will also be promoted at events like the RDX Technocharged Tour that Acura is hosting with ABC to showcase the latest high-tech toys and equipment.

The innovative technology that lies behind the image-tagging itself is actually very similar to the image and facial- recognition software that is used in the security industry. In this case, RPA is blending the Internet, widely available on the tech-informed users’ mobile devices, with the recognition technology to create a unique extension of a fully-integrated campaign. “It’s just a deeper level of engagement,” says Britt McColl, PR Manager for RPA. “These guys have these cool phones, so it just all makes sense for them to fiddle around with the campaign and see what it’s all about.”

Mr. Van Aken won’t divulge just how many images have been tagged so far, but he does foresee extending similar campaigns to future car lines and communications with consumers. “As users grow on WAP pages and [use] the Internet through their cell phones, I think we will obviously take more advantage of that,” he says.

For now, the campaign will run through December 1st. So snap a photo of the RDX with your phone and send it along, because considering that if you read about it here, you must be pretty savvy yourself.

People eagerly await its arrival every year by counting down the days. Some take off of work in celebration and have even petitioned for it to be recognized as an official holiday. It’s clearly not Christmas or even one of the lesser-known national observance days. It’s none other than the release day of EA Sports’ Madden NFL for Playstation, joyfully dubbed by Wieden + Kennedy as “Maddenoliday”. For the release of the next installment, Madden ’07, San Francisco-based Freestyle Interactive has created a microsite around the holiday that just brims with Madden cheer.

Chris Gatewood, Creative Director for Freestyle Interactive, tells ADOTAS that one of the intentions in creating the site was to make the “Maddenoliday” seem as real as possible. The backdrop of the site is garnished with a homey mantel place, decorated with twinkling strings of football lights, garlands, sweat socks hanging over a blazing fire, as well as a picture of the big man himself.

There is also a countdown clock along with Maddenoliday carols and various other trinkets and posters, but the main event is the Maddvent Calendar (below). The first Maddenoliday treat was unlocked on July 24th, when the microsite debuted, and visitors can subsequently discover thirteen other goodies before the big day arrives on August 22nd, when something special looks to be in store.

“All those things that we decided to put in there, they lend themselves to being spoofed very well as far as making comparisons to Christmas. You go to Christmas sites, you always see stuff like special recipes and how to make ornaments and things like that. So we just kind of ran with that and then we said, ‘How can we Maddenize it?’ if you will,” Gatewood explains.

The “Maddenized” advent calendar offers items like standard video clips and screenshots of the game, but it also features more fun fare including recipes, such as the Blitzin’ Blintz (really just an extra large meat pizza rolled up with Ranch dressing and hot sauce), Maddenoliday coupons, a “Create a Cross-Stitch” option, a snow globe that displays Maddenoliday tidings, and many other amusing items to keep you occupied.

We’ve been seeing TV programs in the US like American Idol integrate text-message voting for some time now, and various brands are slowly launching text-based promotions on products for prizes and coupons–McDonalds being one of the latest. There have been repeated reports of ad campaigns making their way to cell phones to sponsor wireless sites and mobile video services. In response, advertisers have been focusing on tailoring their messages for the small screens.

However, the US is still in its relative infancy regarding the wireless craze. According to digitimes.com, China’s Ministry of Information Industry published statistics that revealed that 32.7% of the country’ population subscribed to mobile communications at the end of June.

That’s 426.37 million people, nearly one-and-a-half times the population of the US. About thirty-five billion text messages were also sent in China during that month, averaging 2.75 short messages per phone number a day. Business 2.0 Magazine also points out that Americans are ten times as wealthy as Ecuadorians, and yet the South Americans send four times as many text messages. The trend is nearly pervasive on a global scale — the US texts less. Increased text usage means better access for marketers, especially with text-based campaigns.

The good news is that studies reveal Americans are relatively open to mobile marketing if they find that it is relevant or if it will provide coupons or free services. Americans may not rely as heavily on SMS as those in other countries, which is surprising considering in a walk down a busy city street you will find at least a handful of people engaged mid-text, but our cell phones have developed into extensions of our persons. We are undertaking increasingly more activities through these devices, from communication to research and even into bill-paying. Ultimately, just as any online company not jumping onto the user-generated or social networking bandwagon is left out in the cold, those who resist going mobile will eventually suffer as well.

As consumers, overexposure and even exploitation are certainly imminent. Uninitiated American consumers might not see it yet, but it is coming. Already, European airlines are planning to introduce in-flight mobile phone services at some point next year. Air France will be the first to use the satellite-based technology, while Virgin Atlantic is planning to introduce an in-flight text service to answer passenger questions.

As a result, those outdated “No Smoking” signs on planes will be replaced by “No Mobile” signs that remain lit until the plane reaches a certain altitude to ensure that the phones do not interfere with mobile networks on the ground. While that may be bad news for those who whine about people texting or yacking on their cell phones ad nauseum, and that mobile presence may certainly make flights a little noisier, it is great news for marketers. By becoming so attached to their devices, the mobile generation increases advertiser access whether on land or in the air.

As convenient as it may be for advertisers and consumers alike, making contact with outsiders via mobile inevitably makes for vulnerability. As we reported on August 4th, millions of text message spams are already in circulation. The most frustrating aspect of those unwanted texts, irritation aside, is that mobile users actually end up paying for them. It can also be pretty disappointing to get some of those marketing messages. How many of us have been excited to get a text on a slow day only to see that that it’s our network announcing yet another offer?

Well, maybe most people get enough texts regularly not to get their hopes up, but you get the picture. It also wouldn’t be too surprising if we eventually start seeing ad-sponsored phone calls and texts, not only from businesses, but from family and friends as well.

Many advertising executives will tell you that their eyes are on the wireless spectrum, though many are being careful to establish themselves fully in the online world before going mobile. Others, though, are throwing caution to the wind and taking the medium by storm. Undoubtedly, mobile is a hot topic and it will be interesting to see exactly where advertisers go when they can set up shop in your pocket.