New research released by Frost & Sullivan says that the mobile advertising market in the U.S. is going to generate $2,127.29 million in revenue by 2011, compared to $301.27 million in 2006. A lot of this, the analysts say, will be down to mobile operators getting serious about ways to link up advertising with their subscriber bases, particularly for advertising on the operators’ own portals. (Presumably these portals will continue to get traffic in Frost’s view, despite the exploding growth of off-portal content.)

But the report, entitled U.S. Mobile Advertising and Search Markets, also reiterates the often-made point that operators, advertisers and content providers are still trying to get to grips with the best ways of presenting the ads: people accustomed to the “free” Internet and television (never mind your access fees) still view advertising on costly mobile services to be an obtrusive nuisance, and small screen sizes and slow download speeds do not help much, either.

Currently, Frost says some 15 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers use their phones to access the mobile Internet, which is helping drive a lot of the ad growth both on- and off-portal.

• US Off-Deck Market At 30 Percent—Frost & Sullivan