The mobile ad market is ready to explode--with or without the help of carriers.

With more than 200 million cell phone users in the U.S. alone, it was only a matter of time before advertising invaded this ubiquitous personal connection. To gain a foothold in the market, forecasted by eMarketer to reach $5 billion by 2011, more than a dozen mobile ad companies are offering approaches varying from text messages to a Web-based model to video and banner ads. Two of these mobile hopefuls, one working through the carrier and one around it, include go2 Media and Clippz.com.

Go2 Media, the result of the October merger between go2 and local mobile content provider 80108 Media, allows carriers and advertisers to deliver a personalized and hyper-local experience to mobile subscribers through its wireless application protocol platform and a combination of text and images.

“The carriers in late 2006 and 2007 have really started enabling advertising and encouraging [advertising],” said Lee Hancock, founder of go2 Media. “They understand that this is the right business model to help develop the mobile Internet. … Our goal and position is to be very pro-carrier.”

Taking the opposite approach, mobile video company Clippz.com has opted to sidestep the carrier by adopting video ads. Beginning in early 2008, advertisers can attach ads before or after the Web site's library of mobile video clips, and the content is then delivered free to users off-carrier by sideloading to a cell phone directly from a PC. Phillip John, CEO of Clippz.com, said this is an effective way to cut down on costs while increasing video quality.

“We think that there is a huge potential for going this way because it cuts the mobile carrier completely out of the loop,” John said. “Mobile carriers tend to create walled gardens of users, and they try to ensure that they are the ones giving the content to those users. This kind of approach breaks down those walls because you can get to any user on any network anywhere in the world.”