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Finishing up it’s two-day convention in San Fransisco yesterday, YPulse National Mashup is a yearly event that brings together youth media and marketing professionals from brands, agencies, and the non-profit sector to share practices for reaching today’s totally wired youth. And this year’s findings were a rather obvious one for anyone walking around any school, mall, or other teen gathering place. Teens are becoming more and more mobile and cell companies, advertisers, and other media companies plan to be sure to capitalize on this.

And capitalize on it they will indeed be able to.  It’s estimated that teens wield a whopping $200 billion annually in discretionary spending. Yep, you read that correctly, and it wasn’t a typo. Two-hundred BILLION. Today’s kids must be charging much more for lawn-mowing services than back in the day, or else get one heck of an allowance.

Since teens spend so much of their time plastered to either video games, online, or on their phone, advertises are going crazy to reach them in their element of choice. Marketing agency Fuse recently talked to execs from companies like Sony, MTV Networks, Yahoo, and Nokia to better analyze what the future of technology will look like for the teen market. One prediction given is that the mobile phone in the US will zip right past the desktop in terms of popularity for teenagers. Although right now, only about 20% actually own a smartphone, both mobile and content companies are banking on the belief that their adoption will spread…and fast…among middle American teens.

Bill Carter, a partner at Fuse, presented findings at the YPulse Mashup, and said that smartphones like the iPhone are just the beginning for all-in-one devices.

“Uses of mobile devices will expand to include all kinds of bar code applications and prepaid debit card payment methods.”

This belief is a big part of the reason why geographic ad targeting to teens is expected to absolutely explode in coming years. Currently, providers analyze about 4 billion Protocol addresses to provide what is called street-level targeting to consumers. Companies can then reach teens right through their phone with ads and info on nearby places to go like nightspots, and yes, teens sign up for this service. Carter goes on to explain “When you combine this new technology with teens giving their permission to market to them, the growth could be exponential.”

He predicts that teens will end up buying subscription based music services, a lot like the cable TV model. He also feels that other tech platforms will actually save not kill TV networks. The analog-to-digital conversion will allow teens to watch live TV on their smartphones. This will then in turn help the TV networks to target their programming to specific audiences, which will buoy the cost of advertising.

What it boils down to is “the device is inconsequential compared to the content,” he said.  Wow, whatever happened to those good old-fashioned things with pages you turn for entertainment? Ah, I’m sure if the teen wants, he can get that on his phone too.

Read [CNet]