Sometimes it seems as if mobile marketing has been waiting for its moment in the spotlight about as long as the Chicago Cubs have been waiting for a World Series win. And like the Cubbies, mobile too often seems poised for a winning streak, only to wind up in the cellar for another year.

This year may not be too different, with several recent articles outlining the obstacles that still exist to doing full-fledged campaigns over wireless handsets, at least here in the U.S. Several experts have pointed up the paucity of mobile ads by simply noting how few users have ever seen one on their phones.

But the Federal Trade Commission thinks the time is right for at least a preliminary discussion of the marketing issues that will arise as consumers use their phones for more than talk. Last week the FTC ran a two-day “town hall discussion” on “Beyond Voice: Mapping the Mobile Marketplace” that included a session on the current and future shape of mobile advertising.

One of the speakers on that panel, Ball State University assistant marketing professor Michael Hanley, spoke on mobile ad acceptance among an important subset of users: college students 18 to 24. There are about 18 million of them in the U.S. right now, and Hanley said his research indicates that about 98% of them use mobile phones and 92% use text messaging. “I don’t think there’s another demographic that’s that high” in cell phone usage, he said.

Hanley has been conducting a survey of college students and mobile ads twice a year since 2004, and he told the audience that his most recent poll found that 4 in 10 college-age respondents had received an ad on their cell phones so far in 2008. Interestingly, while that ad rate has doubled over the years, the reported annoyance with mobile ads among that group has remained flat.

Hanley concluded that using incentives in the ads had a lot to do with that relatively low level of annoyance: 64% of respondents said they would accept mobile ads in return for something they valued. For about 28% of students polled, coupons were sufficient incentive for receiving ads, Hanley said.

What goods or services were Hanley’s respondents most interested in getting offers on? Quality restaurants –“not fast food but sit-down restaurants”—movies and dry cleaning, in descending order.

And mobile couponing to get ads through need not be a lifetime strategy. “They’re only a way to get students to use the mobile Internet,” Hanley said. “You don’t have to provide coupons for life—just as a way to get them to trust and use this technology. Over time, they will realize the relevance, and the value will take the place of the monetary incentives. “

Ben Ezrick, senior strategist of digital innovation for Ogilvy Interactive, roughed out the basic penetration of mobile in the U.S. market: 233 million mobile phones, of which 200 million are equipped for SMS or multimedia message system (MMS) communications. About 185 million of them can receive data through a wireless application protocol (WAP) browser that looks like the Web (but isn’t quite); and 12 million are ready to get video.

While that data suggests that almost 80% of U.S. users have the ability to access the mobile Internet, “the fact is that we don’t see a high percentage of users actually accessing and paying for data plans,” Ezrick said. “Only about 13% of the U.S. population has a data plan and accesses the mobile Web on a regular basis.” Only about 6% of users have used mobile search; only 4.6% have watched any TV or video over their handsets; and only 1.2% have watched on-demand TV or video on a mobile phone.

But iPhone users deviate markedly from that pattern. Almost 85% of them use the mobile Internet, and 58.6% use mobile search, while 30% watch video and 20% watch on-demand video over their devices. The iPhone draws people to the mobile Internet because, first, you can’t buy one without signing up to a mobile data plan, and second, because it provides an excellent mobile Web user experience.

“The iPhone has really lived up to the hype,” said Ezrick. “It’s a real game-changer.”

Ezrick went on to suggest the promise that mobile ads may hold for brand marketers, using as example a mobile banner campaign run by computer maker Lenovo shortly after it bought the ThinkPad laptop line from IBM in December 2004. The ad basically led users to click and learn about a discount of up to $600 on Lenovo Thinkpads; they could also opt-in with an e-mail address to get more information.

Ogilvy Interactive used surveys to measure the branding effect of these ads and found a 188% increase in brand awareness among people who saw the mobile ad, and a 500% boost among users who actually clicked through the banner to learn more.

Ezrick said Ogilvy places a lot of emphasis these days on mobile’s ability to activate campaigns that run in other channels. A campaign for Select Comfort mattresses used an ad in USAToday modified with several different response channels for more information: a toll-free number, a Web URL and a text-message option paired with a $50 discount mobile coupon. The SMS channel got six times more traffic than the other options.

Finally Jean Berberich, digital marketing innovation manager for mobile at Procter & Gamble, stressed mobile’s role as an extension of existing marketing plans rather than as a standalone channel in its own right. “Mobile gives us the chance to interact with our consumers when they choose, at the time of need,” she said. “If they’re at the shelf and choosing a product, they decide to ask for help. And that’s where we come in and serve up the right content.”

P&G is still in the “test and learn” phase of mobile adoption, according to Berberich, having run mobile ad campaigns for several brands including Always, Tampax, Pringles and Vicks. “We’re still trying to figure out what it is that consumers find valuable enough to use mobile phones to engage with our brands,” she said.

While P&G has built metrics into its marketing culture, in the mobile realm there just aren’t many well-established yardsticks for success. As a result, the company has been left to decide for itself what metrics prove out the mobile channel.

On the standards front, P&G has set up privacy guidelines for all its brands to follow in mobile marketing, including ensuring double opt-ins for mobile services and stressing that calls to action in mobile ads must offer real value. Opt-ins are for specific programs or campaigns, and opting out must be a simple process.

Berberich pointed to Cover Girl cosmetics as one P&G brand currently testing using mobile as a campaign extension. Print ads in magazines such as “Elle Girl” and “Cosmo Girl” offer short codes that readers can use to access original Cover Girl beauty content on request. The campaign also runs on the brand Web site and on popular mobile WAP sites that attract young shoppers interested in shopping and beauty, such as www.DailyCandy.com.

Users who click through the ads to the Cover Girl mobile site can access a number of features, such as signing on for text alerts and entering a modeling competition. But the function that gets the most traffic from mobile users is an interactive color match that leads them through a handful of questions to find the right shade of Cover Girl foundation for their skin tone.

“People want valuable information through mobile,” Berberich concluded. “It’s all about choice and relevant content. We’re learning that consumers who really get mobile and have unlimited data plans engage like crazy. They love it—sometimes a lot more than online sites.”

So by all reports, progress toward mobile marketing is occurring in this country. It may be happening more slowly than brands would like, and it may not yet be reaching all segments of the very large mobile population. But advertising is leaching into the mobile ecosystem—often on a trial basis or as an add-on to marketing in other channels.

And Prof. Hanley had some useful advice for anyone wearied by years of waiting for the channel to mature. “Mobile marketing is the most complicated marketing in history,” he said. “So taking another year to get there is not going to hurt. The issue is, are consumers ready for what we want to send to them?”