The view from my smartphone: $1 for 3 minutes

As I read the New York Times (app on my iPhone), I periodically feel guilty cause it costs them real money for the virtual content I read for free. So every now and then I click on an ad to send some coin their way. Today's ad was a no-brainer. A promise of $1 to the United Way if I gave 3 whole minutes of my precious time to completing a survey about soup.

Which I did. Only took me 2 minutes.

Fact is, the smartphone is altering the medium and the message, and advertising and our attention spans. Along with where and when we can receive messages. Along with where the messages come from. It is still much too early to say that Google or Facebook or iAd are asssured marketing riches. How we get and retrieve and access and present information is being fundamentally altered by the smartphone, hyperlocal services, the real-time social web. Such destruction will enable new competitors and new business models. The only certainty is the old order will die. My suggestion: it's absolutely not too late to start your own mobile ad business and seek funding from rich people eager to get in on the next big new.