Mobile advertising

I'm reading Fast Company and it's taking a lot about mobile advertising. The example everyone likes to use is "you're walking down the street looking up sports scores on your phone, and a banner ad tells you that pizza is 20% off around the corner".

And sure, that would be cool in that situation, I guess. But there are some details I don't understand yet.

Do I have to install an application for this fancy new model to work? Because I think it's pretty obvious that no one is going to install an app that makes it easier to be marketed to.

Would Google know where I am at all times? It does me no good if google only knows my zipcode, because it will recommend pizza 3 miles away. And yet if Google knows my location within within a block, I think people will be concerned about privacy.

I think the key here is opt-in marketing through apps you download. If I buy RestaurauntGuide.app for my iPhone, I want to be marketed to. maybe I'm a business traveller and I want a steak In a strange town. Feel free to pitch me a $5 coupon for steak.

But while this represents a polite kind of advertising that I would personally enjoy, no one gets rich off polite, opt-in marketing.

Another detail is the iPhone. Everyone's talking about advertising on traditional mobile platforms, but traditional mobile platforms suck. iPhone users are the ones that will be using their phones for information gathering on the Internet, not some poor generic phone user with no data plan and a tiny screen. Marketers need to figure out how to make apps for the smartphones of the future, not the clumsy devices of today.

In fact, the iPhone provides an avenue for revenue right off the bat - purchasable applications. If I was trying to get rich in the mobile space, I'd focus on hiring iPhone engineers, not slinging pizza via Google's ability to stalk me..