The Federal Trade Commission finished its first Town Hall meeting on mobile marketing in DC, probably taking a welcome relief from being beat up by Congress over the impending $5 price for a gallon of gas.

This is a discussion worth having in my view and the FTC should be given some credit for having it. Some folks, like Crisp Wireless’s Michael Weaver, argue that consumers really like advertising and the FTC “shouldn’t shoot the messenger.” And increasingly consumers really do like ads, especially on line, because they are being served ads they actually care about.

Someone I met this weekend, told me they send themselves emails on gmail to get the ads. Although I’m not convinced that this translates as easily as Weaver suggests to the mobile phone. Every time I land at an airport in Europe I get a few messages from the local telcom carrier. They annoy me and I’m sure they tick others off as well. It is one thing to get spammed with email on your PC where your eyes can just glide over them if you don’t have a good spam filter, it is another thing on a mobile phone where they may, for now at least, interfere with what you often want to do—make and receive phone calls.

Mobile marketing has great potential but it will work best in the long run if consumers gets advertisements they care about in a manner they like. Having the FTC poke and prod the mobile marketing business a bit probably isn’t such a bad thing for consumers—or for the business.