Perhaps this is more validation for the mobile advertising space because it shows no stone is being left unturned. Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) announced today that AOL’s (NYSE: TWX) Platform-A will be the exclusive display advertising and sales partner for its more than 5 million subscribers. As small as that may sound (at least compared to AT&T’s (NYSE: T) 71.4 million subscribers), this is probably a valuable and highly sought after demographic of youth-oriented 14- to 34-year olds. Platform-A will manage Virgin’s banner inventory and use its Third Screen Media platform to serve ads. Release.

Update: Virgin Mobile USA CEO Dan Schulman talked about the advertising partnership at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit today and said the deal was an experiment since carriers have yet to really figure out the right way of offering people ads on their phones without becoming a nuisance, Reuters reported. “It’s small and I wouldn’t even put it in the meaningful category yet. We’re experimenting with it. Mobile advertising is something you need to be quite careful with. A cell phone is a relatively intimate device,” he said.

Schulman also addressed questions regarding the announcement that Virgin was in preliminary talks with SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM), which controls Helio, about a number of different potential opportunities. “I do believe you’re going to see continued consolidation in this industry,” Schulman told Reuters. “That should not be surprising to anybody. Over the long term networks are commodities…what you need is more and more scale and more and more cost efficiencies.”