Google Nexus One - Local Marketing and Media Device? Photograph: Engadget

I read an interesting blog post this morning from Fred Wilson about the new Google Phone called Nexus One.  The interesting part to me was not that Google, the leader in paid search and online advertising as a whole, is now in the handset game, but rather this quote at the bottom of the page:

"I don't really use a phone for voice very much. I've made a total of a dozen calls on this phone in the two plus weeks I've been using it, mostly to the Gotham Gal. But the phone seems to work great."

Now for those of you that don't know Fred Wilson, he is a partner at Union Square Ventures, an early stage venture capital company that has invested in some companies that you might know such as Twitter, Indeed, Clickable, Boxee, tumblr and many more  He is often called upon to provide insight on the future of the web and technology in general.  What I found interesting about this comment is the fact that is resonated so much with me personally.  As soon as I had read it I had to stop and wonder - this device (mine happens to be a BlackBerry Bold) that is so universally attached to my person is really no longer a phone - it's my communication hub and I actually rarely use it to speak with people.  Now people have been saying this for a long time, so its not really that surprising, but it really had never occurred to me that over 90% of the time I spend on my phone is not talking with other people -its interacting with the device (data, email, web, music, pictures, videos). 

Combine that information with the fact that Google announced that they will be including click to call functionality on mobile browsers yesterday and the gears start turning.

So if the leader in online advertising is moving into the device game --- it is most certainly to leverage that device as a communications vehicle for local marketing and media to us personally.  The most granular version of local marketing is one to one marketing and that is where local marketing and local advertising is heading.

Marketers need to be thinking about local advertising and local marketing not in terms of DMA's or even cities or zip codes, but rather on a one to one level.  This is not the reality today, but if the leader is moving in that direction then you should start thinking about it now.