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While my Sidekick is very tastefully bedazzled, it doesn’t have access to cool apps like the iPhone. So to date, the only mobile marketing I’ve received has been random texts offering investment advice. And while I appreciate advice on how to make my three dollars of discretionary income grow, I guess I’m not too impressed by the quality of that mobile marketing.

A quick search on the Internet revealed much cooler things, though. My favorite was the Go Find It campaign for the Ford Ka, a Mini-sized car sold just about everywhere but here. Ford distributed stickers with an embedded 3D image of the car to bars, clubs, universities, and music events. Users with technologically advanced phones could then download an app and see these images if they point their phone’s camera at the stickers. If the phone is angled properly, a link would also be displayed for a website with videos, music, and more. 

Now would all that make me want to buy a Ford roughly the size of a roller skate? Probably not. But it does make me wish I had a cooler phone.

Part 6 of a 6-part series. 

Advertisers spend a lot of time trying to get into the consumers’ pockets and purses. As it turns out, the best way to get there may already be inside their pockets or purses.  

We’re talking about the mobile phone (you know: that annoying little thing that only rings during client meetings or episodes of Lost). Marketers around the world are salivating at the potential it has to connect with consumers. And that’s leading to some astonishing growth projections.

Conservative estimates suggest businesses might spend 7.5 billion dollars on mobile advertising by 2013, up from a mere 871 million in 2006. Others think the spending could top 14 billion as early as 2011. All this while traditional ad spending has flattened or declined.

Such improbable growth promises are usually reserved for Bernie Madoff, but this one might have some validity. There are roughly 4 billion mobile handsets in use worldwide. That’s twice the number of televisions globally, and more than 3 times the number of internet users. And that number will most likely continue to grow.

So there are plenty of targets out there. But that’s not the biggest reason businesses are hoping to tap into the cell phone market. It’s the personal interactivity of the mobile phone that makes it such an attractive device. Not to mention, mobile phones are virtually always on — and almost always with the user. Short of chip implants in the brain of every man, woman and child on the planet (a project we’re currently working on), there’s simply no other medium that offers all that.

The problem advertisers face is how to use the device. Right now, mobile is generally used as an extension of pre-existing campaigns. But as more companies build dedicated mobile sites and more consumers get smartphones, new dynamic possibilities will present themselves. We’re talking widgets, apps, GPS interactivity and more. And that means new opportunities to build brands, be creative and connect with the consumer.

Thanks to Naz Arandi, Travis Higdon, Ryan Leonard and Chad Tafolla for contributing valuable insight to this article. Part 1 of a 6-part series.