Consumer watchdog groups the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) filed a complaint today with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission urging it to launch an “immediate” investigation into mobile advertising to help stop the rise of what it calls a growing invasion of consumer privacy. The complaint singles out five practices of mobile marketing the, most of which have also run into privacy issues online. They include behavioral targeting, location-based targeting, user tracking/mobile analytics, audience segmentation, and data mining. The advocacy groups wants the agency draw up rules among other things that would require full disclosure of data collection on mobile devices and would redefine what constituted “unfair and deceptive” practices in mobile marketing.

Some of the companies named in the watchdogs’ complaint read as a who’s who of the mobile ad sector: Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO) AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) along with a number of smaller firms including ChaCha, Velti, Bango (AIM: BGO), AdMob and Marchex.

The complaint, something of a litmus test for the new administration’s FTC, is definitely not something the fledgling mobile-advertising sector needs. You could argue that mobile advertising has already been partly held back by the very real danger of stirring up a consumer backlash. What gives mobile advertising its ability to be more targeted and more effective than other forms of marketing, is of course, what also makes it potentially intrusive and scary to consumers—the fact that they can be reached and tracked in such a personal way.

But where consumer groups see a threat to privacy, companies see a “user experience” they claim can be managed by giving the consumer the ability to opt in or opt out. Google’s product manager for mobile services in North America told Forbesthat mobile ads would have to “add value, offer proper education and awareness for users and give them full control.” The big question is will consumers and companies ever agree on what “opt-in” really means on mobile? If you read the full complaint, you’ll find that the vast majority of practices or services that companies think are “adding value” and are “opt-in” are things that USPIRG and CDD find objectionable. The groups found, for example, mobile marketer Velti’s opt-in loyalty campaigns of sweepstakes, free games, and alerts, that allowed advertisers to build up a detailed profile of their customer base from the signups as “manipulative,’ noting that it was unlikely that consumers would “fully understand the privacy implications of every discount coupon, free download, or ringtone offer that comes their way.” Velti, I’m sure, believes they are adding value to the consumer experience by giving users free content. This really is an opening shot of what has been an issue that the mobile ad sector already knows they need to tread carefully around, and it’s not going away any time soon.