Reasons to be Cheerful

The appointment of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) to champion mobile as an advertising medium (see story below) should be warmly welcomed by everyone in the mobile marketing business. Under its auspices, online advertising spend in the UK has more than tripled in the last three years, from £825,000 in 2004, to £2.8 billion in 2007. Now, the IAB is being asked to work its magic on the mobile channel.
Of course, some of that growth must be attributed to the appeal of the medium itself. While it may have taken some advertisers a long time to get it – and some still haven’t – any channel that allows a consumer to interact with a brand in the way you can online, must be given serious consideration for a slice of the marketing budget. Having proceeded initially with caution, and found that online advertising actually delivers, brands have piled in. But the IAB can argue with some justification that they would not have piled in to the same extent, and within the same timeframe, without its efforts to promote the merits of the web as an advertising vehicle.
It would be wrong to expect something similar to happen overnight in the mobile channel. Whatever the success of the last three years, those who have followed the commercialisation of the web from the early days will know that it was a long, slow road to get to where we are today. On a more positive note, mobile is arguably much more advanced in terms of its evolution as a marketing channel than the web was at the point where the IAB was formed, purely to champion the Internet as a marketing channel, in 1997.
There are other encouraging signs too. Firstly, the appointment of the IAB has the support of all the UK’s major (non-virtual) mobile networks, who will form a Mobile Steering Group to liaise with the IAB on strategy. Secondly, the release announcing the appointment is at pains to point out that the move in no way sidelines the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and the sterling work it does in evangelising the mobile channel.
Coming on a day when Google and T-Mobile in the US are poised to release details of the first Android-based phone, the HTC G1/Dream, it looks like mobile advertising enthusiasts may finally have something other than hype to get excited about.

David Murphy
Editor