Back in 1999, when the mobile Web was in its infancy, Avantgo launched its innovative and free service to bring content to handheld users. Since that time, Avantgo has become synonymous with the wireless Web.

With Avantgo, you can sync content formatted for mobile devices to your handheld from hundreds of channels. These channels includes dozens of well known brands, such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Forbes, Business Week, and AccuWeather.

Plenty of lesser known companies and individuals create channels too. Avantgo organizes channels by categories that range from Automotive to Education to Health to Shopping and, of course, Technology, among others

This month, the service, which is now owned by iAnywhere (a subsidiary of Sybase), marks its fifth anniversary. During November, Avantgo also reached one billion subscriber syncs.

That means Avantgo's thousands of users downloaded and updated their channels a billion times—either through a desktop or wireless Internet connection. Users sync an average of to 6-8 channels of content with about 100 pages of information downloaded per sync.

Of course, with all this syncing come a lot of ads to pay Avantgo's bills.

AvantGo Senior Director Neil Versen asserts, "Adding to our billionth sync achievement, we have established ourselves as a pioneer and leader in mobile advertising. It's a testament to the fact that mobile marketing works when many of our partners continue to renew their campaigns and validate that the medium is a powerful, cost-effective way to build brand awareness and acquire new customers."

In October, for instance, AvantGo launched new campaigns on behalf of Audi, Acura, Corvette, Cadillac, and Microsoft Office.

Rob Britton, American Airlines Managing Director for Brand Development and Advertising, said, "The reason we signed on with AvantGo is simple. AvantGo offers one of the most cost-effective ways possible to deliver online information to a broad range of American Airlines key customers.

According to Avantgo, it delivered a lot of mobile advertising firsts over the years. These include the first PDA text, WAP, PDA graphic banner, and interactive PDA ads.

The company asserts it also rolled out the first marketing survey conducted exclusively on PDAs & Smartphones, in-market buyer PDA auto showroom, one-tap-to-add marketing channel feature, calendar entry insertion from an advertising link, pre-post brand awareness study on a PDA, and one-tap-to-sync PDA marketing game application.

What Mobile Users Want
Avantgo recently surveyed 3,260 users to find out what twelve features they want in a dream handheld. Respondents chose a surprising combination of "bells and whistles" and standard options.

They want normal PDA features like calendars and contact lists, as well as a device with an iPod-size memory to play and store music and other content, e-mail, GPS, phone, compact size, and a larger screen. Surprisingly, MP3 players (77 percent) ranked slightly higher than phones (76 percent) and GPS locators (65 percent), while more hard drive memory (64 percent) edged out cameras (63 percent) in popularity.

Here's the full list of dream features:

1. Calendar/contact list
2. Easily syncs with PC
3. Great battery life
4. E-mail/messaging
5. Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
6. Compact size
7. MP3 player
8. Phone
9. Large screen
10. GPS locator
11. 20+ gigabyte memory
12. Camera