Mobile As The 7th Mass Media » mobilegroove

Today marks the end of a long week of mobile advertising webinars (including this one organized by Mobixell - password adit123) and interviews, activities which for me drove home the pivotal importance of relevancy in all we do. Like a pop song you keep hearing in your head, my ears are ringing with how many times I have heard executives at brands, agencies, and operators echo the increasing importance of relevancy. In fact, Andy Bovingdon, Bango, VP Marketing, in yesterday's interview for the Mobile Advertising Research U.K. project, was by far the most adamant to date. In his view, mobile advertising is a form of mobile marketing that has many forms - all of which must be relevant to us. "The key across all platforms and forms of advertising - search, SMS, banners, and barcodes - is the relevance and the ability to target. Is mobile another screen, or the fourth screen, as some say? I would say it is the first screen. It's always-on and always with us, and that means we can learn a lot more about the visitors [but not individual visitor] to a site or an ad campaign. We can know more about the people who interact with advertising, and we must use this to give them advertising to interact with." Put simply, relevancy rules (!) The message isn't lost on MSG. Almost five years ago, I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, where I preached the importance of delivering the right content to the right person - better yet in the right context. And that has been my message ever since. (Also reflected in the MSG strapline: At the intersection of content and context.) It's where the action is! And if you think it only applied to mobile content portals, then I have one word for you: App stores. This well-written and thoughtful column from Mark Lowenstein speaks volumes. He makes a plea for more personalization in application storefronts, and companies would do well to listen. "I think the most important way to differentiate in this growing but increasingly crowded market is to deliver a more personalized, contextual applications experience. In most cases, all users launching an app store are presented with the same menu. There have been some early stage attempts to enable users to do some content configuration on operator or third party portals, sort of a wireless version of My Yahoo. But if we're dealing with tens of thousands of apps and a small screen device with limited input capability, we have to get a lot smarter about what is presented to the user, with the magic being done in the background rather than relying on the user to self-configure." Where's the connection with Blyk? The answer is evident when we consider (in my view) a milestone quote/observation (below)from Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K.

I am honored to have had the opportunity (for the third consecutive year) to be on the judging panels for the Meffys Mobile Entertainment Awards (categories: Search & Discovery and Advertising Campaign). The Meffys are run by the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and correctly dubbed the 'Oscars of the mobile entertainment industry.' Today I spent much of the day with colleagues David Murphy (Mobile Marketing Magazine), Pip Brooking (Media and Marketing), Jim Cook (MobiAdNews), Helen Keegan (Beep Marketing/Technokitten) reviewing the candidates in the two categories - albeit virtually since I was in my office near Cologne in Germany and they were gathered at the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) office in London. In previous years I was most excited about the companies in the Search & Discovery category because I have purposely focused my career and this site on analyzing tools and technologies that assist us in seeking information/content relevant to our queries and in tune with our personal context. However, this time it was the progressive approaches to mobile advertising that grabbed my attention and won my respect. (By way of background, last year the Meffys for the Search category recognized Gracenote, specifically Gracenote's Mobile Music Platform, as a path-breaking way to enjoy and discover music on our mobile phones. During the last Mobile World Congress, I connected with Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote Senior VP, Sales & Marketing, on behalf of MSG and bnetTV for a demo of this super-cool service. The video interview pops up at random in the bnetTV jukebox in the sidebar, so I encourage you to tune in when it comes around. This sector profile from Mobile Entertainment is also a help if you need a primer on the Music ID market, where Gracenote and Shazam are top contenders.) I cannot divulge the mobile advertising campaign shortlist, nor can I deep dive into individual brands/campaigns/agencies. (The short list is slated for release next week.) But I can highlight the larger mobile advertising trends and models that merit a closer look. What is different this year? Brands and agencies are much higher on the learning curve because they have got past the hype to ask the key question: What is the place of mobile in mobile advertising? Is it 'just another screen'? Or is it THE screen to rule them all? (More specifically, is it the 7^th Mass Media, as author and consultant Tomi Ahonen observes? Or is it the remote control to our lives as Alan Moore, likewise a renowned author and consultant, reminds us in his comprehensive white paper, The glittering allure of the mobile society? Or is it something else? The jury is out on this one. (In fact, it remains a central question I ask brands, agencies, operators and enablers daily as part of the Mobile Advertising Research U.K. project). There are no easy answers, but I was truly encouraged by the number and variety of mobile advertising campaigns that successfully harnessed the unique characteristics of mobile to deliver a message that resonated with the target audience.

Mobile changes all the rules, allowing us to live, work and play in a new collective state of hyper-connectedness. Add the ability of the mobile to blur the boundaries of the virtual and physical worlds – and we witness a shift that will affect every industry that relies on the Web for communications, business growth and interactive marketing.