Mobile marketing is more than just a practice and a representation of what the future holds for the world of digital advertising. Mobile marketing is also an emergent study in college academia. And it could very well impact the immediate future of marketing trends and practices more than virtually anyone realizes.

With mobile marketing settling in to its rightful place in the formal advertising and marketing courses in institutions of higher learning (schools that range from Ivy League to community colleges), mobile marketing has thoroughly infiltrated academia to become one of the hottest topics for instruction in any modern marketing classroom.

While there remains no shortage of old-school ad-men and women yet to think outside the box and embrace the mobile channel for their clients’ promotional needs, it now appears inevitable that the next generation of Madison Avenue titans will be well-versed in the power and potential of the mobile space.

According to a recent Ball State University study, 97% of all US college students own a cell phone – obviously, one of mobile marketing’s most integral tools of the trade. Given the cell phone familiarity with which most students have, helping college students obtain an understanding of mobile marketing’s most basic practices is certainly far from a complicated endeavor.

College classrooms aside, the practice of mobile marketing has also emerged as an enormously popular extracurricular field of study, as evidenced by an unending parade of panels and forums on the topic that now litter the North American and European marketing landscape. Jeff Judge, founder and CEO of mobile marketing technology provider Interactive Mediums, says the process of learning about mobile marketing is quickly becoming just as interactive as the practice of mobile marketing itself.

This reason, perhaps more than any other, is a major indication of why mobile marketing could soon become the very centerpiece of all major advertising campaigns.