Mobile marketing is no longer limited to the relatively minuscule screens of our mobile phones. With companies like Apple leading the way, the mobile marketing industry is now evolving to accommodate something it isn’t used to targeting – an audience not holding a mobile phone. But amidst the boom of the tablet computer era, mobile marketers are now being encouraged to think outside the mobile phone box.

Apart from Apple’s mobile computing juggernaut known as the iPad, industry analysts predict the launch of dozens of new tablet computers in the next twenty-four month period. With the arrival of a larger digital canvas upon which mobile marketers can paint, advertisers are already beginning to realize that the most effective way to engage mobile consumers could change markedly in the days ahead.

Without question, the new mobile advertising systems that will accompany devices like the iPad are destined to become the real “game-changers” within the mobile marketing community. And as powerhouse companies like Google and Apple duke it out for the largest chunk of the increasingly competitive and expanding mobile ad space, a plethora of new opportunities will emerge for cutting edge mobile marketers who stand poised to capitalize on the newest turf of mobile advertising – the tablet platform.

Of course, with new opportunities come new challenges – challenges that extend beyond making mobile web pages and applications look prettier on a larger screen. New mobile ad platforms, as one industry analyst recently put it, could “complicate search engine marketers’ efforts to integrate mobile search into their operations.” Yet, on the other hand, the ability to serve up highly effectual mobile marketing campaigns to targeted customers on their mobile-marketing-optimized tablet could very well prove a worthy trade off.

To be sure, mobile phones and their compelling advertising platforms are certainly not close to extinction. They are, though, about to lose some of their luster with developers so enamored of tablet computers like the iPad, that app and software development for the iPhone will continue to   taper off noticeably. But despite the obvious apprehensions of some about dabbling in mobile marketing on an altogether new frontier, the booming business of tablet computers and their close ties to our mobile phones will only serve to strengthen the reach and effectiveness of modern mobile marketing and ensure its sustained expansion for as far as anyone on Madison Avenue can see.