Loopt, a popular and increasingly well known social-mapping and communication solutions provider, is putting its specialized services to use in partnership with mobile marketing firm Mobile Spinach to serve up a new and highly localized mobile advertising experience that integrate offers, coupons and discounts from local businesses and small retailers.

For now, the efforts will be targeted in select markets beginning in San Francisco and expanding to New York and LA shortly thereafter. How will the join partnership initially work?

According to Loopt: “For example, Blowfish Sushi, a Sushi restaurant in San Francisco, offers any signature roll for free, which typically costs $10-$15 per roll. Or Palio D’Asti, an Italian Restaurant in San Francisco’s Financial District, offers an exclusive 30% off dinner this week only. Loopt users can simply show their phone message at the restaurant to receive these discounts.”

Although Loopt’s newest localized mobile marketing endeavors will have limited reach at first, Loopt presently has approximately million registered users, with their services reaching all major US carriers and dozens of handsets and smartphones like the iPhone.

Apple, however, may ultimately provide more hindrances than opportunities for Loopt, which could meet resistance from the App Store’s new policy that applications incorporating location to deliver targeted mobile advertising will be rejected outright.

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The targeting methods associated with mobile advertising are efficient at best, but a new partnership promises to up the ante significantly.

Mobclix, a mobile-ad exchange, has partnered with Nielsen to integrate its immense amount of ad-targeting data within it’s platform to provide mobile advertisers a targeting capacity like never before.  Nielsen’s proprietary “PRIZM,” and “ConneXions” consumer targeting methods will be available to Mobclix to then resell to mobile ad networks and publishers.

Nielsen’s PRIZM is built around a database that segments markets by lifestyle and consumer behavior based on data collected via cookies, while ConneXions delegates consumers into 53 different demographic categories.  Under the new partnership, these targeting capabilities — once only available for Online and traditional advertisers and publishers — will be available for mobile ad-buyers as well.

With Mobclix having the capability to resell Nielsen’s data, it will now be possible to serve varying mobile ads to 150 different consumer audience segments.  “The need to have precise marketing within mobile marketing strategies has become critical for survival,” Mobclix co-founder Krishna Subramanian said in a statement regarding the partnership.  “The enhanced precision enables advertisers and ad networks to produce greater advertising ROI and gives mobile publishers higher CPMs from premium ad buys.”

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The biggest winner to emerge from Sunday’s Super Bowl may not be the New Orleans Saints after all.

Flo TV is being praised by many today for their advertising dollars “well spent.”

Flo TV broadcast two Super Bowl ads during the game, which proved among the most memorable of the evening.

The ad everyone is talking about, however, is the one dubbed “Moments,” which served up will.i.am delivering an instant classic remix of “My Generation” – a favorite hit from Super Bowl halftime entertainment, The Who.

Prior to the Super Bowl, will.i.am and The Who revealed that all the proceeds from the “My Generation” remix will benefit Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund.

FLO TV, indeed, turned many heads at last night’s Super Bowl, and took the power of mobile entertainment to the biggest annual worldwide viewing audience. When taken into consideration how many companies and entertainment outlets tapped into the Super Bowl’s marketing machine through the mobile channel this year, it could very well be noted that the 2010 Super Bowl elevated mobile marketing to a whole new level on the grandest advertising stage of them all.

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Sirius XM is putting into action the longstanding encouragement from fans to delve deeper into mobile territory and more comprehensively tend to satellite radio fans on the go. As a result, Sirius XM is introducing a new mobile application built for BlackBerry smartphones.

The app will provide access to better than 120 popular channels serving up music, talk, sports and comedy programming – without a single commercial to break up the pace. Although the app is poised to pacify a lot of satellite radio fans, the Blackberry incarnation of the Sirius XM app will not follow suit with the previous iPhone application, which included programming ranging from The Howard Stern Show to professional sports broadcasting.

For now, Blackberry says the new app provides premium Online subscribers (who own the Storm, Bold, Tour or Curve) with programming that includes Mad Dog Radio with Chris Russo, Oprah Radio and Martha Stewart Living Radio, music channels like The Grateful Dead Channel, Eminem’s Shade 45 and – as you would expect – Jimmy Buffett’s classic “Radio Margaritaville.” In addition, BlackBerry users will be able to bookmark Sirius XM Internet channels for fast, easy access through a “Favorites” function.

According to Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, Sirius XM: “We are truly excited to launch the Sirius XM App for BlackBerry, giving millions of discerning mobile consumers the ability to take our superior Premium Online programming with them on the go.”

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Total Nonstop Action Wrestling is experiencing its highest weekly viewership since the professional wrestling outfit debuted in 2004. Now competing with rival promotion World Wrestling Entertainment, TNA is stepping up efforts in mobile marketing in an aggressive endeavor to do what the company still hasn’t accomplished – pinning WWE in overall viewers and popularity.

As a key component of its multichannel marketing strategy, TNA is giving mobile marketing a shot by utilizing Knotice Ltd.’s on-demand Concentri software. While many wrestling fans say WWE lags behind on a strong mobile presence, TNA is picking up the slack with this new effort which will allow wrestling fans to receive “text blasts” on their mobile devices regarding TNA events, discount codes for tickets or merchandise, interactive contests and promotions, voting for matches, and, most importantly, exclusive news and video content.

“It will create a better one-on-one connection to address our fans’ wants and needs,” says Dan Stevenson, director of marketing at TNA. For the promotion, this latest mobile marketing effort will help cultivate and further cement the loyalty of their user database, which is already believed to contain the names and contact data for greater than 100,000 TNA wrestling fans.

TNA Entertainment LLC, which recently acquired the performance services of legendary wrestler and former WWE and WCW star Hulk Hogan, produces Thursday night’s “TNA iMPACT!” on Spike TV.

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Roll out the red carpet. A top executive from Google will be on hand for a mobile marketing related event in New York next week.

The occasion will provide an opportunity for the Google big kahuna to delineate his company’s mobile marketing plans and overall strategies for the year ahead.

Alex Barza, the Google exec alluded to, oversees Google mobile ad sales. Supplementing his presentation on February 10th will be relevant case studies and a Q&A session with the audience.

Other speakers presenting or contributing to panel discussions will include officials from Bango, HipCricket, Ping Mobile, Impact Mobile, The Lustigman Firm, Amobee, Neustar, Sumotext, and Netbiscuits, to name only a few.

Among the most eagerly anticipated speakers is Michael Becker iLoop Mobile, who will deliver a presentation on the essential tools of the trade for effective and efficient mobile marketing.

As 2010 continues to give rise to countless new businesses and industries ramping up mobile marketing efforts, the practice of mobile marketing is, itself, rapdily becoming a “teachable lesson plan” that continues to turn up in educational settings, seminars, and even marketing classes across the academic landscape.

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Mobile apps, and especially branded apps, are all the rage now-a-days, but a resurgence in the lost art of sponsorship is making a comeback, and brands are shifting their thinking because of it.

Steve Smith of MediaPost published a great article recently that talks about sponsorships in terms of mobile marketing, and what benefits the concept provides over branded apps.  Marketers are increasingly realizing that not every brand translates easily into the kind of utility consumers really want on their phone, and thus sponsorships are becoming a more attractive option.

Publishers are getting a lot of interest from marketers who want to be sole sponsor of new branded media apps, in lieu of trying to go it alone.  Instead of buying up a new audience for their branded app, they prefer to align with a tool and a media source brand that’s already built an audience.

All-in-all, the concept makes a lot of sense.  Brands who are unsure how to tackle the mobile app explosion and ecosystem that’s continually forming around them, but who understand the need to get in on the action, can opt instead to partner with an app that’s already done the heavy-lifting in terms development and building an audience.

A perfect example of sponsorships in action, related to mobile apps, is Rodale’s collection of over 30 apps related to men and women’s health.  Unlike other media companies that put out a single branded news or magazine app, such as Esquire and GQ for example, Rodale has a more fragmented approach that focuses on mobile tools and references.  In the process, they have created a flexible catalog of available ad inventory that can be leveraged as sole sponsorships.

As the mobile app ecosystem continues to be flooded with new apps and techniques, sponsorships will undoubtedly become a favorable option for many marketers.  Instead of going head-to-head with an already established app, entering into a sponsorship and gaining an immediate audience simply makes more sense.  Whatever the case may be, sponsorships are set to make a comeback in mobile marketing, that’s for sure.

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