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Is 2008 the year for Mobile?

March 20, 2008

Posted by: Peter Platt in Online

I just returned from the iMedia Breakthrough Summit, where the key focus was on the latest advancements in online media opportunities. The core topics centered around mobile marketing, online video, social media and gaming. While social media clearly grabbed some of the spotlight, mobile really jumped out as a key focus.

The same problems we’ve had for years continue to plague the industry...too many carriers & inconsistent standards, concerns about privacy, limited use of phone based internet browsing, limited location based targeting, etc. But some other things came to light as well. No longer do you need to have huge budgets to venture into the mobile marketing space. Building wap (web access protocol) pages is fairly easy and affordable, mobile ad networks make it possible to buy across carriers with minimal headaches (and budgets), and the carriers themselves have really stepped up in their efforts to reach out direct to agencies and advertisers to help.

So is 2008 truly the year for mobile? Probably not for most advertisers, but I do believe we’ll see a lot more advertisers jumping in and beginning to test. In essence, I believe that this is the year to watch...we’re finally going to see some real movement in this category. It will still be a small number of advertisers who venture in...but a lot more learning will be going on in the industry. I’ll be watching (and likely we’ll be helping some of our clients begin to test)...you should be watching too!