This week’s AdWeek featured a great article covering the general trend of large brands seeking new ways to reach consumers on the mobile phone: “Small Screen, Big Ideas: How the new square inch of space is changing creative.”

“The screen is small. The audience’s attention span is even shorter…

While some streaming video services… allow advertisers to buy 30-second spots, some agencies are discouraging clients from using mobile media in that way.

… savvy marketers are looking well past repurposing 30-second spots to creating more and more text applications, streaming video and downloadable short films.”

Both the challenge and opportunity for both mobile content providers and advertisers is to navigate this new venue which is partially reminiscent of the (desktop/laptop) web, television and other media types, but yet distinctly different. To me, it seems that the mobile experience is very much about the here and now. What information do I want to find because I am right here at this location (and social context)? There’s something about the situation around me which pushes me to seek specific information (including entertainment). Or what information do I want to find because I am in this moment? The ability to find or receive temporal information whose value will soon diminish is a key component to this device’s capability.

Many of the highlighted examples of the promotions in Adweek article integrate the concepts of here and/or now into them (e.g. a mobile code on Burger King packaging = here). And if not fully integrated, all of the illustrations are bound by them (e.g. films and tv-like ads are limited by the consumers’ taste for shorter snippets due to their own location context and limited time). It makes sense that the trends of effective mobile marketing creative engage the user along the dimensions of the here and now because it matches how people use the device in the first place.