The exponential advances in technology have seen us become accustomed to having everything squeezed into a handheld device that we can take with us everywhere. Mobile payment by smartphone is already proving to be a winner for retail and we're fast approaching a time when anywhere represents a marketing reality. For brands not to have a mobile strategy prepared is a ticking time bomb that must be quickly defused.

 The integration of technology such as communication, photography, GPS, music and gaming etc has beckoned the dawn of the smartphone/tablet age, lauded to be evolving faster than the web itself. In spite of this, it appears that sound monetization strategies are not following. Take Facebook for example; their audience is 60% mobile-based, though it accounts for just 15% of its total revenue. Perhaps it's worth questioning how strong the link is between time spent online and our responsiveness to ads. After all, the reason we've integrated our technology is to make life easier, right?


I find that when I do click on adverts on my mobile, too often the site isn't mobile-friendly and the painful loading process that follows kills my interest. According to Google's study last year, 79% of mobile adverts led to non-mobile optimized sites. This is unforgivable! Why waste the effort to promote something in a medium that can't provide a good user experience and may even harm the brand?

New mediums take a lot of getting used to for marketers, and a key challenge besides functionality is likely to be how to convey promotional messages without invasively frustrating users. New metrics, analytics and research will be required for brands to really understand their audience. Interestingly, it appears that smartphones are most popular with singletons while married folks favor tablets.

For mobile ad space I think that time is their biggest killer. For an advert to make a lasting affect on me, it's either got to boast great audio or be visually impressive. At this stage, mobile hasn't got the firepower to do either, so it seems they've got a very tight window in which to capitalize on our attention. Thus it's not surprising that location based targeting is advertisers' secret weapon to encourage responses to calls to action, specifically if we consider that 90% of smartphone owners use maps and local search.

Sure enough, the apps on my smartphone frequently prompt me to share my location, but how are they using this information? Based on frequent reminders to redeem 'mischarged PPI' - they're not!

I wouldn't mind if brands tell me when there's a great offer for lunch just round the corner, and I'd love to know when my favourite brand is opening a new store nearby. Although that's an unusually rose-tinted view of advertising, I do feel that there's huge potential for mobile advertisers to replace their current blind punts and begin the transition that will transfer mobile from a support model to the medium.

By Rich Anderson @rich_anderson9