Maximising Revenue From Mobile Advertising 2008 - Part Deux

As mentioned earlier this week, the Creative Director and I attended the 2008 make money by flogging stuff on mobile conference on Monday. The crowd were pretty much all mobile technology or network people, with some agency representatives, consultants and analysts thrown in. All in all quite an interesting bunch, with some senior and seasoned experts putting in their pennies worth. We were, I believe, the only pure-play mobile ad agency there, if there were others, they kept pretty quiet.

The day was a game of two halves. In the morning we heard about some of the limitations and possibilities around mobile technology driven solutions and technical issues and barriers around advertising on the channel. User profiling and targeting were high on the agenda. We basically heard alot about how; but not necessarily about why or what for.

Brands were conspicuous in their absence, and in the afternoon it was left mostly to Ben, our Creative Directer and Jonathon MacDonald, a consultant (currently with Ogilvy) to bring us back to the key questions of user experience and creativity (you can see Jonathon’s presentation here). It felt a little bit like things had happened in reverse, we’d started off by asking how we were going to implement advertising before we’d asked what consumers wanted and how best to present brands. As Ben pointed out, with good advertising the mechanics need to take a back seat.

Oh, and according to the panel, 2010 is probably going to be the year of mobile advertising! I don’t know what the penetration of mobile internet ready phones amongst the big cat community is, but I looked it up and 2010 is actually going to be the year of the Tiger.

Grrrrrrrreat!

Also posted on www.welovemobile.co.uk