MocoNews covers the 3GSM mobads panel

@ 3GSM: Ad Services On Parade For Boom Still Longed-For

• Posted by Robert Andrews
• Thu 15 Feb 2007 11:18 AM PST

The mood so far this year, that 2007 would be a banner year (literally?) for mobile advertising, carried through into Barcelona. I was optimistic that, gathered at the congress here, the industry would have noted consumers’ own view that straight-to-handset marketing is annoying and struck gold with a formula to justify some of the recent huge valuations for the emerging sector. But, whilst everyone here was at pains to show they understand how to respect the user experience by not intruding on users’ personal space, there is little consensus on the best way to achieve that. Instead, a plethora of ad services interpreting that key rule differently.

“At the end of the day, you can say ads are good,” said ex-Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO of Blyk, a free and ad-supported mobile service launching in the UK this summer. “It is not anymore “[this is just an] ad; it is [now] something that is useful, extremely enjoyable or surprising. Therefore the [notion of] spam or intrusiveness can be pushed aside.” Zed CEO Vijay Sundaram said: “Simplicity sometimes is extremely appealing. We have been surprised how good SMS ads can create positive reaction.”

But Rhythm New Media CEO Ujjal Kohli, who claimed to have signed up half of the top 50 biggest-spending TV advertisers, suggested reproducing TV-like ads on mobile was the only sure-fire way lucrative enough to make the medium worthwhile. “Mobile operators collectively generate half a trillion on the planet - if the revenues are [just] 600m, it’s noise,” he said. “It has to be 20 or 30 billion for it to be relevant from their CFOs’ point of view. So we have to come up with advertising models that are scalable. Television is brilliant because it’s very simple and highly scalable. In that lies a massive opportunity for mobile.” Rhythm has therefore hired producers skilled in repurposing television content for the small screen, Kohli added.

One company, Aditon, is even delivering advertisements to handsets’ screensaver-like idle screens. When I asked content acquisition manager Margaret Gold whether the screen that consumers are usually not watching was a tough sell to ad buyers (Aditon ads flash up on phones whilst idle twice a day), she acknowledged some empirical evidence on effectiveness was required.

Meanwhile, the carriers are not buying into analyst hype about mobile advertising. O2 is yet to begin a three-month trial of ad-supported services, ending May, while Orange is currently polling consumers for their opinions, representatives of each company told a 3GSM session on the topic. They will not forge ahead until they are certain on how not to upset subscribers.

Which really just leaves Yahoo, whose aggressive push into the mobile search marketing space shows the heavyweights with internet experience already bring track record and inventory to this emerging space.