Mobile Marketing & Advertising: Challenges and Opportunities

Companies are increasingly embracing mobile phones as a viable channel to target consumers with brand messaging. Mind Commerce' s lates report, "Mobile Marketing & Advertising: Challenges and Opportunities," forecasts that spending in this medium will grow to $19 billion by 2012 from about $1.6 billion today. Fueling this growth are improvements in mobile technology by leading cellular service providers, increased consumer adoption of mobile phones, and a growing niche market of suppliers of mobile search, messaging, and marketing services.

This research explores the current mobile marketing and advertising market, evaluating methods companies are using to effectively leverage it as a platform to enhance brand awareness and increase sales effectiveness. The report examines the leading suppliers to the mobile marketing industry and analyzes how their products are impacting the way consumers opt-in to cell phone-delivered marketing messages and increasingly use their phones to search for, and even purchase, products and services.

• 2008 will be a breakthrough year for mobile spending as marketers worldwide move from disillusionment over their expected return from this platform to the realization that mobile can enhance consumer brand equity
• The current mobile advertising and marketing universe is beset by a whirlwind of activity in which, by mid-2009, Mind Commerce expects will be dominated by a few key mobile marketing suppliers
• Mobile search is playing an increasingly important role in helping cell subscribers navigate the mobile Web. Marketers are allocating their mobile dollars to algorithmic search (which enables results to be listed in order of relevance) and sponsored search, which includes ad placements.
• Current trends point to U.S. consumers adopting mobile messaging and search more readily than European cellular subscribers.
• The U.S. is still far behind many other global markets likely due to the strong landline system and slower migration of consumers to mobile. In addition, wireless networks and handset manufactures remain a highly fragmented industry in the U.S.
• Mobile ad networks are engaged in a competitive front to win premium inventory and offer it to high-profile brands. Advertisers demand increased reach of the networks for them to make it as part of the regular marketing budgets of Fortune 500 brands.
• Mind Commerce forecasts significant changes by 2012 in terms of spending distribution of all of the mobile marketing subcategories - mobile search, particularly localized search, will dominate.

• Learn the different forms of mobile marketing and which subcategories will excel in the long term
• Examine the mobile marketing vendor landscape and discover which vendors will survive the supplier shakeout
• Understand the critical success factors that will drive future mobile marketing business models
• Grasp the dizzying array of mobile marketing spending forecasts and know where to allocate future marketing resources

• Marketing and advertising executives
• Mobile telecom carriers
• Mobile technology suppliers
• Yellow pages publishers
• Media content providers

• Mobile search and content providers: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Enpocket, ICrossing, Go2, Whitepages.com
• Mobile advertising networks: DoubleClick, Greystripe, AdMob, Third Screen Media, Millennial Media
• Research firms: eMarketer, Jupiter, Kelsey, Gartner, ABI, Strategy Analytics, Informa
• Mobile telecom carriers: Nokia, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Nextel, U.S. Cellular