I thought I’d share a little synopsis of a patent search on mobile advertising that we recently conducted. This is a pretty hot topic (or at least it will become one), since people consider their cell phones a temple of sorts – any spam or unwanted communications are looked at as a mortal sin. But at the same time, as we want to bring data services to mobile devices and find new ways of monetizing them, some form of advertising has to be considered – especially if we want to make them independent of carriers. Most of these are not issued patents, just PCT’s. So treat ‘em as prior art, kids.

I’ve included the patent titles and numbers here if you want to check them out on USPTO.gov.

Some of the patents we found were focused on trying to make the basic phone services cheaper for the consumer by incorporating advertising.

[2005045721/WO-A1 Service System and Mobile Communication Terminal For Free Using of Data Communication] wants to let you send free messages, and have adverts piggybacked on each one you send. The goal is to create a messaging service that is at least partly funded through ads rather than carrier fees.

Similarly, [20020085027/US-A1 Method for displaying advertisement using short message service in a portable mobile terminal] wants to make your calling rates cheaper by sending and storing ads on the phone via SMS. Those ads would be displayed before and during phone calls, etc.

[01477918/EP-A2 Advertising method using mobile terminal, mobile terminal advertising system and mobile terminal] Check out the abstract for this one: “A user displays the advertising contents on the display unit in the rear face and the like of the portable telephone in public places and the like so as to advertise the contents to a third party. The advertiser shares a part of the communication fee for compensating the user for displaying the advertisement.” They specify a “rear face”, which I guess means a screen facing away from your head when you talk. Sort of like a mini-billboard.

Anyone thinking about flash banner ads yet? If this doesn’t have flash ad written all over it, I don’t know what does:

[2005025252/WO-A2 Method and System for Distributing Data to Mobile Devices]

Embodiments of the invention are concerned with a method and a system for distributing mobile applications, in particular to aspects of receiving, processing and displaying advertisements on mobile terminals. In. one aspect, embodiments provide a data visualization method for use in visualizing data on a mobile terminal, the mobile terminal comprising a display area and being adapted to receive process data comprising an executable process, the method comprising the steps of: arranging for the mobile terminal to receive a visualization request from the process; arranging for the mobile terminal to select data in accordance with the visualization request; and arranging for the mobile terminal to perform a visualization process in which the selected data are displayed in the display area, in which execution of at least part of the executable process is paused until the visualization process has been completed. Thus with embodiments of the invention mobile terminals are configured to process an executable process which makes calls for data to be displayed to the user of the terminal. Preferably the data to be displayed are retrieved from a store of advertisement data, and are selected in dependence on a characteristic relating to preferences of the user. In at least one embodiment, the executable process is a game and the game is paused for the purposes of displaying these selected data when the game reaches a particular level. In another embodiment the executable process might be a news relaying application configured to retrieve and display news stories.

[2005101863/WO-A2 System and Method for the Distribution of Advertising and Associated Coupons Via Mobile Media Platforms] envisions the world being enhanced with bluetooth-sent coupons and offers. These would pop up on your mobile device while you are in the context of the coupon being sent.

Here are some patents incorporating location into advertising:

[2003005267/WO-A1 Method for Off-Line Matching Advertisement to Mobile Terminal Bearer Locating in Specific Area]

[20030115098/US-A1 Advertisement system and method] Gotta love that title.

Well there’s some more, but these were the most fun to write about. Please feel free to share ones that you’ve found as well.