Mobile Advertising Coming of Age in 2010? - App 'Search'?

Mobile Advertising Coming of Age in 2010? - App ‘Search’?

I just got finished reading a good article in Venture Beat talking about Mobile advertising and how they think it will start to come of age in 2010.

“Maybe 2010 will be the year when advertisers start seeing mobile less as an experiment and more as a serious part of their campaigns.”

- Venture Beat http://bit.ly/4TfJqT

They give a basic overview of all of the different types of mobile advertising going on right now and they claim that currently SMS and MMS is the most lucrative.

They also, in the quote above talk about how mobile isn’t really part of the media plan yet. I couldn’t agree with this more. Right now every agency I talk to says they have a mobile budget that is more or less an R&D budget. They don’t have any plan or strategy for mobile yet, and put a small budget against it just to be in the space. It’s not a significant percentage. That said online as a whole is still fighting for a whole number percentage for a lot of brands so there is plenty of upside.

That said, I don’t think 2010 will be the tipping point, but I do think some progressive advertisers will begin developing a mobile strategy for advertising. You will see a couple advertisers doing press around a marquee mobile campaign and the fact that they claim to have a strategy and the press release itself will be aimed at making the brand become a more progressive, younger, tech savvy brand.

I think in 2010 these will be predominantly branding dollars. I think for the medium to expand the industry needs to decide whether people will spend more time on mobile sites or with apps. If it’s sites, the online model can be applied. If it’s apps, more work needs to be done and app software middle-ware companies will be in high demand.

Also, if it goes the app route, there needs to be some more fluid App Browser or a better App search system. iTunes and the Android Marketplace will need to open up their source and allow external companies to index and create store-fronts for these apps so people can better organize and use them. ——> Enter the dawn of the Google/Yahoo/Askjeeves/Excite of mobile where directories and search engines (or the equivalent to that) will be the center of the mobile world.