For most in the wireless industry, marketing has been an opportunity lurking in the shadows -- plenty of hype and lofty dreams resting squarely on the potential that marketing can deliver. And yet most companies' interest ends when it comes time to pay the piper.
That's not to say there aren't companies making hay out of the existing mobile marketing business. Mobile marketing has climbed to a $4 billion market annually, according to the latest projections. While that number pales in comparison to traditional marketing spend, some wireless executives and industry leaders say the market will double this year alone.
The "year of mobile marketing" has been predicted many times, and because of that, many of the very groups and people that could help make that happen are sitting on the sidelines. Companies willing to take big chances with their dwindling marketing budgets are hard to find, and it's a problem that's growing more pressing by the day.
With so much resistance and nagging problems like funding, measurement roadblocks, and the absence of industry-wide guidelines standing in the way, mobile marketing has become just as much a red flag in one camp as it is a checkered flag in another.
"Folks are thinking about the promise of mobile … but today as we're growing up, we really just want people to think of mobile as a medium," David Katz, VP of mobile advertising and publishing at Yahoo, said on a panel at CTIA recently. "If they just lined us up against TV and any other medium, they'd be very happy."
With all the talk about mobile marketing not reaching its point in the sun yet, Moderati CEO Jon Vlassopulous is convinced that only means the market opportunity will be even greater than imagined. "It's definitely a nice, new way for marketers to get involved," he said.
MTV Networks is one company that has seen steady growth in mobile advertising over the last two years; in 2007, the company brought in a negligible amount of revenue from mobile advertising. But today, MTV has a dedicated mobile ad sales staff, according to Greg Clayman, the company's EVP of digital distribution. It wasn't too long ago that MTV considered mobile an experimental marketing option, and little more than that.
All in all, there was no mistaking the fact that mobile was high on the minds of CTIA attendees, and not for all the usual reasons or dreams of the mobile promised land.
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