We mobile marketing evangelists weren’t wrong when we said messages and media on cell phones reaches consumers absolutely anywhere, anytime.

Yes, Samsung Mobile went there with an online survey, the results of which were unveiled today, asking people about the times of day and where they are when they communicate on their mobiles. Salacious details include the following: 72 percent of respondents take cell phone calls while using the restroom; 32 percent, during church; and 10 percent, while “in the throes of passion.” Maybe those all-night adult toy shops on Hollywood Boulevard and in the West Village ought to send SMS campaigns in the wee hours, when customers would be most receptive to sales offers.

More boringly appropriately for marketing experts, the questionnaire also includes information on the professional uses of smart phones–which, thanks to the devices, expand well past business hours.

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Spring may be when a young man’s fancy turns to love, but this summer has been when they used their cell phones to do something about it.

The mobile intelligence firm Ground Truth reports today that the number of unique visitors to mobile dating websites rose 92 percent between the first week of June and the last week of July. The mobile-optimized site Flirtomatic saw 65 percent of mobile daters for the week that ended August 8–a much bigger audience than those for online dating stalwarts eHarmony and Match.com, which ranked 17 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

While it also has a PC version of its site, Flirtomatic seems especially able to tap into the go-go-go mindset of a mobile consumer. Users can send instant messages and images to fellow networkers, in keeping with the immediate gratification afforded by the mobile platform. Meanwhile, part of its $9 million third-round funding will reportedly be used to develop a GPS feature, allowing users to “flirt” with people immediately nearby.

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If news of Visa and Bank of America, MasterCard’s mobile PayPass, Google and Paypal, or Apple possibly developing NFC technology hasn’t convinced you that mobile marketing technologies will soon become deeply intertwined in banking, take a look at the winner of the research firm Juniper Research’s 2010 Future Mobile Award: Wells Fargo & Company.

A press release today from Juniper proclaims, “Wells Fargo was chosen based on its multiple platform strategy and continued service innovation such as the recent near real-time warning of potentially fraudulent activity.”

Wells Fargo allows customers–whether their operating systems are iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or even Palm– to access their accounts in several mobile ways: By sending a text message to a short code; by going on the bank’s mobile website; and by using mobile apps.

The financial institution also offers an SMS alert program for its credit card customers. Those who sign up get a text message every time their Visa card is involved in a transaction, alerting customers to potential unauthorized use of their accounts.

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Here’s an interesting story.  Most mobile-ad startups are lucky to see success even with well-educated and experienced founders and loads of venture funding, but it’s even more impressive when one proves successful led by a 16 year-old.

UK teenager Christian Owens, 16, has done just that.  His company, called Branchr, is a provider of PPC ad-services for traditional and mobile Websites as well as mobile apps.  In its short existence, Branchr is already serving more than 250 million adverts to 11,000 websites/apps every month and has even acquired a second company, Atomplan, which provides business software.

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Sometimes something so simple can have a huge effect.  Case in point, using a simple “clickable link” service can boost application downloads by an enormous margin.

Photobucket, the most widely used photo-sharing service on the Web, announced recently that along with releasing their mobile app, they leveraged a new service from GetJar dubbed “App It!” to help promote it.  How it works is very simple: when you upload an app to GetJar, you’re provided with an automatically-generated “download link” that can be placed anywhere you’d like.  When clicked in a mobile browser, the user is instantly directed to the app’s page on the GetJar servers.  The user’s phone make and model is detected, so they’re provided with a version of the app that they can download and use on the spot.

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On the heels of our post earlier today regarding a panel discussion at the eTail 2010 summit over mobile apps vs. the mobile Web when it comes to a mobile commerce strategy, Adobe has published a new survey that should shed some light on the debate.

Adobe’s “Scene7 Rich Mobile Commerce Survey” was conducted from July 6 to July 23, 2010, to identify businesses’ strategic and tactical plans for mobile commerce over the next year.  The survey received 446 responses from representatives at leading enterprises worldwide – with most coming from North America.  Of the respondents, it found that 80 percent of companies were planning, or had already deployed a mobile website, compared to the 8 percent of respondents that were interested in applications.

Granted, Adobe has a vested interest in the mobile Web over mobile apps — as its Flash technology is more prevalent and accepted there — but the survey still sheds an interesting light.  The survey uncovered four key areas of focus for businesses’ mobile strategies: promotions, commerce, product information and branding.   Seventy-five percent of respondents named promotions as the core of their mobile strategy, validating the mobile channel as an important method to drive traffic and support multi-channel commerce.

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Today the Chicago-based media company Tribune–which own papers like the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and TV stations nationwide–made a rather dull announcement about promotions within its Interactive division. Well, dull until you distill the fluffy comments to a key phrase by one promotee. Said new vice president of product development Shawn Gannon, ”We have a strong group in place to lead the digital and mobile charge towards innovative offerings and services not only to our current partners and users, but also to new businesses and audiences.”

This piqued my interest because I’ve long said that the news industry–my own former industry–needed to seriously look at digital distribution, as well as understand exactly what their value is, and how to monetize it. There are a few types of mobile offerings that I’d like to see Tribune, or any news media corporation, create.

It boils down to that beloved news (and tabloid) phrase: Exclusives. Local newspapers have unique content, with coverage of people, events, and issues that no one else is writing about. This is the space where hometown papers don’t have to compete with large news companies for eyeballs. So denizens are going to be extremely interested in–and, moreover, willing to pay for–these stories. With the mobile platform, news organizations can distribute paid-for information in a variety of ways.

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