Friday, Jul 30, 2010    Text size: 

"People love apps as well as reading mobile websites, that's why mobile display advertising is taking off right now — and that's only the beginning," Smaato cofounder and VP Petra Vorsteher stated. "Connected devices will be everywhere and people use them all the time. I would call this a promising opportunity."

"But ad formats will be richer, and ads will be more personal than they are today," Vorsteher added. "Augmented reality campaigns and location targeted ads are only two things we support and push today."

Beyond format types and approaches, cross-platform marketing opportunities exist. For example, a mobile phone user could scan a bar code on a DVD cover and bring up a review, sample content, or perhaps even a discount coupon or free website access — while print magazines could include such "links" as direct hooks into advertiser sites — bridging the gap between the physical and virtual worlds.

With the increase in mobile video, advertisers are looking at creative ways of placing their message into the content, evolving past simple "commercials" before, during or after a sponsored video clip, to include focused product placement and social marketing.

Much is also made of the possibilities of Bluetooth advertising, delivering localized offers to prospects as they pass within range; as well as MMS and SMS advertising using multimedia and text-based promotions, respectively.

For its part, AdMob boasts a 10-fold increase in click-through rates for its mobile offerings (which focus on banners and text links), over the rates of comparable online advertising methods, showing the robustness of traditional digital marketing techniques.

Innovation requires capital, however, so the development of new advertising vehicles will depend on convincing advertisers to spend their often-dwindling budgets on trying new approaches to new markets — even if they do not fully understand the technology.

"The Mobile Marketing industry is still in its infancy. That's why most of the people in the mobile industry are entrepreneurial types and share a passion for technology," Vorsteher concluded. "We still need to educate marketers to shift their media spend to mobile."

For those seeking standards, the Mobile Marketing Association offers ad guidelines, while the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) offers a series of Best Practices for mobile websites and adult applications.

Given the adult entertainment industry's heritage of being first-to-market with new advertising tools, the future looks bright for operators able to reach today's demanding, tech-savvy mobile consumers — before these new methods in turn become passé.