Urban Airship is a provider of mobile push messaging, helping companies send messages and offers to consumers' devices. And the company is predicting what it calls the "third wave" of investment in mobile marketing, following the first two waves — mobile advertising and mobile apps.

Urban Airship said the advent of Apple's Passbook mobile wallet application, which allows marketers to push offers, tickets and boarding passes directly to a consumer's phone, is the catalyst for this third wave.

Not surprisingly, Urban Airship is also launching a set of tools that will help companies leverage the Apple Passbook app. The tools, called PassTools, come to Urban Airship through its acquisition last month of mobile development company Tello.

Urban Airship said it is offering select companies early access to its PassTools API, giving them direct access to the development team, and and the ability to contribute to Urban Airship product development.

PassTools lets companies quickly create coupons, tickets and loyalty cards that can be used through Passbook. And they don't have to write code or possess developer-level knowledge to do it, the company said.

"Urban Airship has a history of being first to market to take new, cutting-edge functionality from Apple and make it easy to use and scalable," said Joe Beninato, general manager of digital wallet at Urban Airship. "Today, we are accelerating this third wave of mobile marketing investment by bringing the ease of use and scalability of PassTools to enterprise early adopters who wish to provide the convenience of personalized, updated passes to their customers."

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