By Michael Sprouse

Let's face it: there are some marketing professionals and executives at big-brand companies who are currently skeptical about mobile marketing.

The detractors cite that the industry is young; there are many kinks to be worked out in the entire mobile ecosystem; there is not yet widespread adoption of mobile devices from consumers; consumers who do use mobile devices won't embrace advertising because of connotations to email spam; mobile marketing hasn't come close to reaching its potential; and finally, that the mobile advertising ecosystem needs to grow up before the industry truly becomes an "industry," before there is a real "there" there, so to speak.

These counter-arguments are all true. For now.

Before I launch into the potential of mobile marketing and what we can expect over the next several years, think back to the days when a few significant devices were being launched as communication platforms.

Think back to marketing methods hatched on these platforms. Television. The Web, which then spawned search engines and social networks. Shopping channels. Email. Video-on-demand.

All of these are far more mature than mobile marketing or even mobile devices themselves. And they all went through growing pains, questions about adoption and other skepticism.

A growth business
A study I read recently from eMarketer shows that mobile advertising spending worldwide is projected to increase from $2.7 billion to more than $19 billion by 2012.

In the United States alone, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of the worldwide numbers, the figure is expected to reach well north of $6 billion by 2012, up from $878 million in 2007.

Of note, however: the Asia-Pacific region is expected to surpass the U.S. in mobile ad spending by 2011 or 2012.

From these numbers, text-based advertising makes up the majority with display and search advertising -- expected to experience the highest percentage growth -- making up the rest.

Apparently quite a few people think that this industry will grow up in the next five years, and marketers will be using a variety of techniques to help it get there.

Clearly, in the U.S., I believe we are past the point of there being a question on adoption for devices and even Internet usage on these devices.

Who do you know who doesn't use a mobile phone? How many people do you know that shelved their landlines in favor of solely using a mobile device? Do you see more people accessing the Web on their mobile devices than ever before to download songs, check scores and watch videos?

The answers to those questions are why marketers should be excited at what's to come. Mobile marketing, regardless of the device it is on (and there will be many invented that we don't even know about yet), now has what marketers most covet: an audience and a platform to reach that audience. The only questions are the "how" and the mechanics behind marketing to the audience.

Web meets mobile
I see a confluence of the Web and mobile devices occurring and in some cases it is already happening. More mobile devices are being used. More advertising is being sold online and on mobile. More users are accessing the Web via their mobile device.

The important point here is that many companies have used the Web as their hub for marketing activity, no matter what form of business they engage in, and rightly so.

Why? Because companies know consumers and power users have computers and they use the Internet far more often than other platforms. The Web has become ubiquitous.

Take an offline publishing example. If you're a magazine, you've probably digitized your print edition. You've built a Web site and can now take advertising revenues online and offline from advertisers wanting to reach your magazine's audience.

But the dirty little secret that no publishing company will admit is that you probably now have a Web site that is starting to attract more popularity and scale than the magazine itself.

The reason? Because users have an easier time accessing your content 24/7 whether at work, at home, on the road via laptop, et cetera. Computers and the Internet are always there with the emergence of hot spots, laptops and yes, mobile devices.

So now companies are starting to use the Web as the hub of marketing efforts, able to use the platform for marketing offline products and services or their other digital platforms to make sure users have a 360-degree experience.

So if the Web is becoming the hub for marketing activity now because of its ubiquity and portability, doesn't it stand to reason that mobile devices will only add to this dynamic?

Most everybody carries some sort of mobile device with them at all times. People sleep with their mobile device next to their beds for fear of missing something!

This represents a clear opportunity for marketers as this industry grows from infancy to maturation, and most experts believe this will happen sooner than later.

Stay tuned and you'd be wise to consider how these dynamics will affect your marketing efforts, budgets and what the ideal extension of your brand will be to mobile devices and what partners you need to reach your coveted audience most effectively.

Michael Sprouse is chief marketing officer of Epic Advertising, a performance marketing company in New York. Reach him at .