Mobile advertising to generate $10 bn by 2010

Great headline, but how is this going to acheived?

One theory is better tools to serve and analyse ad campaigns. This gives the advertiser robust reporting, which in turn breeds confidence and should open up the network to give exponential growth on advertising... as i say, it's a theory.

The other thought is media owners running intergrated web and mobile sites and selling the total inventory, after all they know how to sell ads, it their job.

Strategic tie ups between ad sales specialists and content owners is also a step towards monetising traffic.

This is all well and good but what level of traffic growth is required to deliver exponential growth? Penetration of mobile internet usage is low in the U.S, well under 10%, the U.K performs better but is still only around the 20% level.

An observation that all is not well in the U.K is the lack of mobile adverts on operator decks. On my Orange homepage for example i have yet to see a compelling advert or leading service. I do see, however, plenty of mobile game adverts, not exactly encouraging. (if you look out my earlier blog on consumption of content you will note i do not use mobile games).

So many operator's see mobile games as a bigger money spinner that mobile ads?

You see, that is the problem.

I am sure if someone like AdMob asked the operator's to take the risk on pay per click adverts on their home page the answer i suspect... is a quick- no thank you.

AdMob is interesting: Globally they have served some 16billion ads since launch.They are growing quickly, 2bn will be served in January alone. Impressive.

Targeted? more targeted than Orange trying to sell me bloody mobile games!

However, not targeted enough i suspect, for now.

So who else will join AdMob in leading the charge towards the $10bn pot of gold? and is the growth in mobile internet traffic suffiecient to meet with the demand of advertisers?

I suspect that long tail and social networking content will be far more compelling in 2010 than it is now, thus driving awareness and usage, hopefully... off portal. Not that i have anything against the operators. I just happen to believe in giving the consumers what they want.

How will this extra traffic be monetised?

I really like the Blyk model it's dynamic and targeted.

If free content or data or texts or whatever is offered to drive the consumer profiles, then serving useful adverts on the mobile should be a walk in the park.

If Blyk can deliver quality and AdMob can further segment the quantity then that is a good start.

So are these combined offerings enough to shift mobile advertising from incremental growth to exponential growth over the next two years?

Ask the ad agencies.. better still ask the operators.

Oh i forgot to mention two names, who i suspect know exactly how this will play out.

Step forward Google and Yahoo

$10bn ad industry in two years =
work in progress... for now