As expected, one of the big themes at CTIA this year is mobile advertising and marketing. The biggest factor in this is the carriers, which seem to be coming around to the idea that there are ways to serve ads on mobile phones that won’t annoy customers into churning. The industry has been talking about mobile advertising for years and familiarity breeds contempt...not to mention that content sales haven’t yet offset the decline in voice revenues so telcos are looking for other revenue streams. Which isn’t to say that everything is hunky-dory, msearchblog is noting rumors about Google’s mobile service (and possibly other search services): ”Mobile search companies are unable to completely stop vendors and advertisers from accessing the mobile phone numbers of mobile consumers...So, in more cases than one; when a mobile user browses the web and then clicks sponsored links and surfs around a bit before exiting; it is highly probable that they will receive SMS from that advertiser.” Obviously this wouldn’t go down too well with people, and I think advertisers that did it would end up shooting themselves in the foot.

At CTIA Yahoo was one of the bigger mobile advertising announcements, but it wasn’t alone. Amp’d announced plans for video ads, signing Third Screen Media to run its ads on across its linear TV services, video-on-demand and WAP, and to actually serve as Amp’d’s primary advertising sales agent (release).

Content providers are also getting in on the act. Viacom announced that Pepsi and Intel were its first mobile advertisers, MSNBC’s Multimedia on Mobile service is completely supported by ads, NBCU regards advertising as important to its mobile content strategy.

Reuters has chased up some companies at CTIA and has a good piece on hte issue. AT&T said revenue from mobile advertising is “almost nonexistent” at the moment, but it’s gearing up its efforts. “In the next 12 months you’ll see a definitive ad strategy from us,” said Jim Ryan, vice president of data services. “It’s a hundreds of millions of dollars annual business” for the industry. MobiTV has plans to launch an interactive ad plastform in coming weeks with options for consumers to call or text the advertiser, and will also use Yahoo’s new service. It’s quite bullish about the market: “We expect that we can get an incremental 20 percent of revenue by selling advertising,” MobiTV President and co-founder Paul Scanlan told Reuters.

Outside of CTIA mobile search company JumpTap announced a team-up with iCrossing to place ads on JumpTap’s white-label mobile search offering, which is on Boost, Virgin and Alltel in the US. The release doesn’t say, but I assume carriers will get a slice of the ad revenue. In the UK Orange is extending its mobile advertising efforts, and will roll out mobile advertising to all of its customers on its Orange World portal in a bid to earn more revenue, reports Mobile Today. Clickable advertising banners will appear on web pages when users browse the internet through the portal.