Mobile Advertising To Take Off In 2007

However, according to Marriot that could all be about to change this year, with several of the exhibitors at the GSM World Congress saying that they had the ability to integrate advertising with mobile phones, enabling them to bring in new revenue to offset the declining growth in voice services.

US service providers, including Verizon and Sprint-Nexel, have already agreed guidelines that will mean phone-owners will see advertising only after choosing to receive the messages, which are usually in return for discounted services. Similar rules are also under consideration for the European market.

Marriott added: “Privacy is a big issue, and that has to be solved for mobile advertising to be successful. I don’t think people will opt in 24/7, but maybe they will opt in for certain times of day and for certain types of advertising.”

However, Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, said that the key to allowing advertisers to sell to several operators at once was a recognised industry technical standard.

Sarin said: “If we don’t work together, our suppliers will see a fragmented medium and a fragmented user base, as opposed to a single valuable medium. We need to seize the moment and work together to help ads move to mobile. It won’t happen well if Vodafone does it differently than Orange and T-Mobile.”

A recent report from eMarketer said that US mobile marketing and advertising looks set to explode in 2007 (see US Mobile Marketing To Grow In 2007).

At the start of the year, Forrester Research released a report which said that a growing number of consumers are moving from voice-only mobile services to other activities, paving the way for a viable audience for mobile marketing (see US Consumers Ready For Mobile Marketing).