Over the next several years, three major trends will fuel increasing demand for mobile content in the U.S.:

• The growing number of mobile Internet users

• A dramatic increase in the amount of money consumers spend on data plans

• Continued growth in smartphone sales

eMarketer estimates that 68.6 million users will log onto the mobile Web at least once per month in 2009. By 2013, that number will increase to 126.2 million people.   

In the short term, publishers will be emboldened to monetize mobile content through subscriptions, a la carte fees and other transactions rather than assume that advertising alone can support their emerging mobile businesses.

Having learned tough lessons from monetization experiments on the Web, content owners are determined to approach the mobile arena with a direct-revenue mindset.