The Wall Street Journal reports that cable and telephone providers who want to sell you Internet, phone, and TV service in one bundled package are also looking to sell ads and air content that will span all three surfaces as well. It appears that early results are positive, but there are some potential challenges, too.

For one, no one group seems to have deep enough penetration across all three potential services. Phone companies have a huge mobile user base, but not necessarily a TV user base to back it up. Cable has television wrapped, but not enough phone customers. For another, each of the types of content and advertising have obvious experts, but these don't span from one type of ad to another, just as video content designed for the 10-foot viewing experience (TV) doesn't translate to the 3-foot (Internet) or 1-foot (mobile phone).

Finally, even though the premise is sound, and the notion of capturing audience across the multiple platforms they might use to consume media and be available for ads, understanding how to link this all together, how to measure consumption of the ads and content, and several other areas to consider (content rights, for instance?) mean that this is still a fairly early stage strategy to consider. Further, how will the additional bandwidth of delivering this rich content impact mobile networks, for instance? There's a lot left unfinished here.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here, and feel free to send email to [email protected] to discuss this further.