Our media strategies editor looks at mobile and explains what the potential marketing pitfalls may be, as well as who your best target audience is in this medium right now.

The wireless platform's marketing applications have long been discussed. For those in the -- for lack of better nomenclature -- interactive marketing and advertising space, wireless/mobile has long been perceived as the next great frontier.

But to borrow from one of the industry's leading participants and earliest practitioners -- Doug Weaver -- mobile has always been kind of like soccer in the United States: always just this side of being the biggest thing since that last biggest thing. Mobile as an advertising platform has mostly been a vision of the future that when realized transformed that vision of jet packs and transporters into carry-on backpacks and long lines on the jet way.

What's held back the use of mobile as an advertising medium hasn't been a lack of trying. Mobile advertising facilitators -- like Enpocket, ThirdScreen and Quattro -- have long touted the reasons why mobile should be a great ad medium: high penetration of the device, the close-up relationship a person has with that device, the anytime-anywhere nature of the medium and the potential for location-specific messaging. What has held mobile back is the technology itself. The other obstacle to mobile has been the carrier, but that's a whole other issue!

With the advent of the long-awaited 3G (third generation) phones, bigger screens and more constant connectivity, mobile marketing has a chance to actually go somewhere. Where still remains to be seen, but at least it can now see a change. 

Another challenge to the adoption of mobile as an advertising medium is the potential tolerance for it. While penetration is very high for the platform, that alone isn't a compelling reason to use it to advertise. The penetration of the four-walled bedroom is also very high, but that doesn't mean we want wild postings on the wall over our beds. Such an intimate environment typically requires a more sublime approach.

If you are going to use mobile as an advertising vehicle, the way you convey the message and the specific audience are important.

While everyone has a mobile device -- that being primarily their cell phone -- not everyone is the best candidate for marketing to over it.

Best prospects are:

1.) Early adopters
This segment is best served by the business user. Technophile early adopters, though significant, are a less likely advertiser prospect, unless the advertiser is from the technology category. And even then, as most of us know, technophiles aren't a huge "clicking" population. They also don't typically take kindly to marketing messages in their personal space.

2.) The business user
 "On the go" and so most likely to rely on his or her mobile device for news clips, sports clips, weather, etc. They are the standard adults 25-54.

Prospective advertisers for these audiences are Travel, Finance and Business services.

3.) Youth market
When Kodak released its first camera product for general consumption, it was marketed as a toy for kids. What the company suspected, and what we now know, is that if you want someone to do something new, it is best to try and get those who have fewer established patterns of behavior to do it. These are your teens, 13-17. But the 18-34 demographic, with a skew to 18-24, is certainly viable.

Prospective advertisers in this medium are Entertainment, Movies, Television, Games (of the video variety).

Eventually, everyone will be a prospective candidate for mobile marketing, provided the masses don't rebel against it and it is not done too poorly at the outset. Female demos will be significant moving forward, given the fact that more teen girls carry and use their cell phones than teen boys do.

Movement into the mobile space should certainly be made, but it shouldn't simply be made because it's possible to do so. As a recent study done by Universal McCann shows (as one reporter put it, "this just in from the Department of Duh!") the majority of Americans use their cell phones for making calls. Talking to other people remains the killer app for the device. Foisting a new use onto it won't necessarily be met with open arms. 

But one generation's invasion of privacy is another generation's means of self-expression, is another generation's regular-use medium.

Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas is vice president and director of online media for ICON International Inc., an Omnicom company. Read full bio.