It was a good show -- nearly 34,000 delegates, tech-focused agenda, five days in Las Vegas, Al Gore's take on melting ice caps -- but last week's CTIA Wireless conference didn't push or nudge mobile marketing one way or the other.

Rather, mobile marketers were like orphans in the cavernous Las Vegas Convention Center, surrounded by technology companies of all stripes but few that offered mobile marketing or commerce applications or services -- make no mistake, the future of the wireless industry.

The small mobile marketing pavilion -- roughly six pods -- on the low-trafficked second floor of the convention center was ample proof of CTIA's attitude to mobile marketing: an afterthought.

Even more shocking, the mobile marketing pavilion pods were offered for free to some of the exhibiting companies. And most of those companies abandoned their tables on April 3, even though the show floor was open till 3 p.m. on that final day of the conference.

The mobile marketing and advertising day event -- itself held in one room on March 31, the preshow day -- was weak. Many panelists often talked passed the audience, offering opinions, not solutions.

What a missed opportunity for mobile marketing.

While there is no doubt CTIA Wireless was superb in its highlighting of infrastructure issues and wireless technology progress, the conference's inadequate attention to mobile's potential in marketing, content and commerce was striking.

Indeed, sideshows such as the mobile marketing and advertising track or a similar Deloitte-sponsored partner gig were not enough. Not when the events were designed not to attract either brand or agency executive.

"Mobile Life" was the theme of the show. Or was it?

Content consumption on mobile is today's reality, as is the increasing use of SMS, mobile Web sites, mobile banner ads, mobile mapping, social networking, mobile video and mobile applications. They constitute the bulk of mobile phone usage beyond talk and text.

The ecoystem representing players in that part of the mobile life played a minor role at a show that has the power to influence many within a compressed period of time in a town designed to delight.

Where are you?
Back on the show floor, major absences were noticed. Of the more than 1,000 exhibitors, only 40 or so had direct lineage in mobile marketing or commerce.

While the BlackBerry booth was dazzling and had probably the most visitor interest due to the launch of the BlackBerry App World store, the No. 1 innovator in mobile phones was missing from the show floor: Apple.

And where was Google? Isn't Android supposed to be a rival operating system to BlackBerry, Apple's Safari, Nokia's Symbian and Linux?

And Yahoo? One of the most innovative players online and in mobile -- where was its booth? Has cost-cutting come at the expense of brand-building and customer acquisition for what is likely to be Yahoo's future? Invitation-only meeting rooms don't count, by the way.

Yahoo's leadership ought to support the Yahoo Mobile team, a bunch of hardworking frequent fliers who deserve all the marketing support they can get, and not simply panel-speaking gigs.

Kudos to Microsoft for its booth. Clearly, deep pockets helped the company send its staff to push the Windows Mobile message.

But the larger question is this: Why couldn't CTIA, the industry's leading wireless trade association, convince Apple, Yahoo and Google to exhibit at this largest mobile event of the year? Why couldn't it convince these marketers to understand that sometimes simply showing up is all that matters, as Woody Allen once said?

Are Apple, Yahoo and Google so arrogant and cocksure in their technology and marketing that they think going it alone is the best way to extract mobile's marketing, content and commerce potential?

Do they, and all the other members of the Mobile Marketing Association, not understand that leading from the front is what is expected of the players holding the future of targeted, permission-based marketing in their hands?

Do they have the luxury or the finances to wait another year for mobile to advance, while they lament their fate publicly at the countless, ill-focused mobile industry events nationwide?

Are they waiting for the carriers to be prince to their Sleeping Beauty?

The carriers have bigger fish to fry -- infrastructure concerns over increased data usage, subscriber churn, privacy concerns over marketing, lawsuit after lawsuit from overzealous attorneys general with gubernatorial aspirations and regulatory caps overseas on text-message rates.

No wonder short code provisioning -- making short codes go live after they are allotted to the marketer -- has crawled to a snail's pace. Where are the mobile marketing players extensively lobbying the four major carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile -- to ease up on the marketing side?

What's the net conclusion? Mobile marketing is not a top priority for the carriers. Because the people and the companies who can show mobile marketing's potential were largely absent in action -- from the show floor to the agenda to the delegates.

No excuses about "This isn't our show -- it's too technology-focused." This was mobile marketing's show, because it was for the four major carriers who control the industry's fate.

Make the right call
Solidarity -- that's the need of the hour.

Marketers need to understand the carriers' concerns. Carriers need to understand the true potential of mobile marketing, content and commerce. Or do we want government to understand the potential and then throttle the channel with overreaching regulation?

Bypassing the carrier will not pay dividends. Carriers must have skin in the game to allow mobile marketing to flourish on their bandwidth, devices and data plans, and to their subscriber base.

And carriers can't cock a snook at mobile marketing and commerce, not when it's those channels that will come to their rescue if consumers start dumping high-value, two-year contracts in favor of unlimited data, monthly $50-or-less prepaid services.

Marketing, content and commerce incentives linked to easy payment options will be the glue that keeps subscribers loyal to their carrier.

Mobile marketing will not grow at the speed it needs to if the industry does not quickly coalesce around common marketing standards, platforms and consumer concerns. The industry will not grow as fast as it can if doesn't speak a common language that the advertising agency and advertiser understands.

Even a non-industry person such as the 45th vice president of the United States understood the urgency of action.

In his brilliant $100,000 keynote on the final day, Mr. Gore said the wireless communications industry was right at the hub of the technology transition. He chose to focus on an African proverb in his closing remarks.

"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together," Mr. Gore said. "We need to go far, together."