I attended the "The Future of mobile Advertising" presented by the AIMIA on Tuesday morning, this was mainly a chance to launch the AIMIA mobile advertising guidelines, There was little earth shattering information and most of it is common sense and a great deal of "use us, other people don't know what they are talking about".

Disappointments

• Mobile advertising is going to be amazing, this year 6-7 million, 200 Million in 3 years, 1.3 Billion by 2010, 10 - 20% of all advertising, little of this seemed based on fact, seeing as the numbers were so wildly different. The six to seven million was actually the previous 12 months, I believe, otherwise it was YTD.
• People are trying to work out how to measure mobile advertising, for some reason they believe this isn't going to be click through or SMS's sent or impression based.
• Content, including advertising - such as banner adverts need to be tailored to the individual device, no great surprises there, scrolling to see adverts either horizontally or vertically is bad.
• Attitude of some of the presenters towards technical folk rather than advertisers, referring to developers as "techno dorks" and the unless companies using a developer who knew XHTML would most likely get it wrong. Yes, the guy got on my tits - I guess they have highly trained advertisers in that particular company creating mobile sites and definitely NO techno dorks lowering the tone.
  

Possibly useful information.

from Hubert Kjellberg, Head of Media ,Ericcson.

• 15 - 39 Demographic are leaving print media or not even bothering with it.
• Consuming all media in the same way as the internet media.
• Carriers are moving away from walled gardens - huzzah.
• Figures for passive television consumption are dropping, still healthy, but dropping.
• A group of 14 - 15 year olds were interviewed about media consumption and there preferences were.

• internet
• mobile
• ipod
• television
• When developers of mobile sites need to be aware of local regulations, these can be through various bodies, broadcasting regulator, AIMIA, etc.
  

from someone at publicis digital

• mobile phones are the 3rd screen,
• 19 million phones in AU, not bad for a population of just over 21 million,
• 4.5 million 3G phones, possible tipping point ?
• Terms
  
• on-deck --> teleco site/portal
• off-deck --> content publishers
• local knowledge is important in mobile advertising ( one would assume mobile content full stop ), as usage varies around the world. One wonders if this is culturally, development of mobiles services or possibly the type of devices available in the market.

someone from communicator.com.au

• click through for off deck is ~ 3 - 6 % for mobile advertising campaigns,
• consumer perception that data is expensive, this is a barrier to adoption, consumers need to be educated,
• data charges are falling,
• age of users is moving up, 25 - 40s watching mobile videos,
• real time behavioral targeting will be important
  

some at tiger spike

• most traffic is on portal,
• in the next 6 -12 months we will see more off portal traffic,
• Need to follow the 1,2,3 rule :

1. One point of entry,
2. No more than 2 seconds to load,
3. No more than 3 clicks to get anywhere - 30% lose per click, so not much point.

• Mobile sites need to be live sites if they are going to be around for more than a month, so have content to put up, this will also get people interested in coming back, consider a news link, then people will know the site is alive,
• watch for bots mimicking mobile devices, they can show false spikes in traffic,
• things that companies are doing wrong at present :
  

1. Not considering company strategy,
2. being to clever, billboard that has a web site where you can download an app for your phone that will let you read a bar code,
3. copying web site to be a mobile site,
4. not getting the right advice.
   

someone from vodafone mobile advertising

• a new group set up to provider agencies the ability to advertise on the vodafone LIve! portal, rather than just seeing vodafone adverts,
• starting in AU, being pushed out worldwide,
• vodafone talking with other carriers about cross carrier advertising and other possibilities - early days and cross carrier agreements move at ( pre global warming ) glacial speed.
  

someone from Sensis

Example of a mobile banner advert for KFC that linked through to a site that used carrier data to build a map showing you where the closest KFC was based on your location, also had a form so you could enter your mobile number and they would SMS you a voucher for a free or discounted burger.