• by October 19, 2004

First the television screen, then the computer screen, and now the cell phone screen? With worldwide revenue from mobile information and entertainment expected to grow to $39 billion in 2007 per the research firm Ovum, mobile phones look like the next big platform for advertisers to do their thing.

On Monday, ThirdScreen Media, the provider of mobile media management services that helps companies execute mobile marketing initiatives, launched its wireless ad-serving technology, a wireless media planning tool, and its mobile marketing ad network.

This development positions cell phones not just as a talk-on-the-go tool, but also as a personal information device for advertisers and marketers to interact with consumers.

Unique to this new suite of mobile advertising solutions is that while most U.S.-based mobile ad companies focus on SMS, ThirdScreen is pursuing a display advertising model that will act as a mobile marketing channel for advertisers and brands. Its ad-serving and tracking technology, M-Spot, delivers ads to WAP sites and to downloadable applications, including those in the J2ME and Brew formats.

The company does use SMS technology, but only to power the post-click interactions it facilitates between marketers and its ads' viewers. ThirdScreen calls such an interaction an "m-opt-in" -- the mobile equivalent of an e-mail opt-in.

Publishers such as Nascar.com, MSN, FunMail, eBay, and Weather.com. make up the company's network of publishers who can serve ads on behalf of marketers. That network, which currently consists of WAP sites and downloadable applications, serves 15 million impressions per month in the United States and 50 million per month worldwide.

I' "m-opting-in."