Mobile Search Conference & Awards In London PLUS Blyk Analyst Briefing; What Makes For A Winning Mobile Advertising Strategy? » mobilegroove

I’m back today – literally just hours ago – from CTIA Wireless in San Francisco and leaving tomorrow a.m. for London to speak at the Mobile Search Conference organized by Visiongain and later present awards during the gala dinner.

I’m greatly looking forward to meeting with a raft of new mobile search companies including India’s Alabot (founded by Akshat Shrivastava, whom I finally meet in-person after so many insightful exchanges on IM) and NearUSearch, a super-cool mobile search provider that has a premium model sure to make waves. I had a pre-briefing with Heather Mlodinow, NearU Search CEO, and will provide some excerpts here after the event.

Likewise, I’ll circle back with a feed of the some 150+ interviews the bnetTV crew produced during CTIA. Regular readers will recall that MSG partnered with bnetTV to conduct video interviews during CTIA. I did about 30 C-Level interviews with mobile advertising firms, mobile social networking providers and mobile search companies (JumpTap, MCN, Medio Systems, Motricity and Seeqpod). More on Seeqpod’s new mobile discovery technology soon – we’re deciding between a podcast and a Q&A format.

This week’s schedule includes client meetings, analyst briefings organized by Blyk and XTRACT, and a visit to see Bango Analytics in action at company headquarters in Cambridge. A special highlight is a meet-up with Ogilvy’s Jonathan MacDonald to discuss progress on his book, The Communication Ideal, and congratulate him on an excellent and overdue “rant” about the overuse (or shall I say abuse?) of the terms “targeting” and “relevancy” in the mobile advertising and mobile search spaces.

Jonathan has some good ideas and I hope he develops them further. From my vantage point the buzz around relevancy is unsettling. The vast majority of companies I interviewed at CTIA, for example, gave it at least lip service. A few even revealed concrete technology in the pipeline to potentially deliver on the promise of “right ad, right user, right context.” Still, since so few firms can deliver this level of targeting, we know something somewhere has to give…Think dot.com boom and bust, and hope for the best.

Well, a lot of ground to cover during the next week, no to mention loads from CTIA to organize and analyze.

Naturally, I’m honored to be invited and involved in so many key industry events. However, I am also relieved that my calendar is no longer so packed with appointments. This allows me to devote time and focus to the analysis and deep-dive posts that are my passion (and the mission MSG).

In fact, I recently had to turn down an invitation by the European Commission to speak on mobile search and advertising. Rather than make the trip to Seville later this month, Dr. Ramón Compañó, European Commission – Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC), and I are discussing ways to properly promote and document the workshop here on MSG. Another reason to check back regularly.

Thanks again to James and Marji for their posts in my absence. BTW: My meetings during CTIA were extremely successful and I look forward to showcasing a steady flow of top-notch content from a mix of seasoned mobile executives and industry bloggers. They are on board because they regard MSG as a leading thinking space and premiere platform for their news and views. As I have said before, a lot is happening at MSG – and all of it good!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Location-Based Services, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Media, Personalization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.