Cellphone Billboard

The Boston Globe: In an ad-saturated world, the cellphone screen is a nearly pristine canvas.
But a number of area companies are helping to transform the device that 220 million people are loath to leave at home into a personal, pocket-sized billboard, hawking everything from the latest ringtone to Fabio-favored “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!”
“We’re calling the phone ‘the brand in your hand’ — you’re never more than a foot away from it, 24 hours a day,” said Fareena Sultan , associate professor of marketing at Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration. The challenge, Sultan said, will be to produce an advertisement for the phone “that excites the person holding it.”
Fueled by faster wireless networks, more capable phones, and increasingly popular data services, the cellphone ad space is poised to grow, according to industry watchers, and a cluster of Boston start-ups have positioned themselves as the middlemen who bring brands to the screen.
Boston-based Enpocket Inc. partnered with Sprint Nextel Corp. to place banner ads on the carrier’s mobile browser homepage last year. Third Screen Media Inc., also in Boston, builds cellphone-sized banner ads for major brands such as Burger King Holdings Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Toyota Motor Corp.
Cellphone screen is today’s hip billboard [The Boston Globe]