According to most mobile marketeers the last ten years were all ‘the year of mobile’. Every year again they were telling that ‘mobile is really going to take off this year’. Well, since the end of 2007 I’m working in mobile and I think I’ve stepped in at the perfect moment. Although mobile marketing revenue might not be flying in at the moment, 2008 has until now really been the year of educating agencies and advertisers. Most of the big brands have run a trial campaign by now, and most of these campaigns gave a reason to proceed spending advertising budget on mobile. It makes sense to predict that in 2009 mobile marketing will manifest itself as a frequent part of the media mix.

Last Tuesday I attended a mobile marketing roundtable at the offices of MVNO Blyk. In this two hour discussion among thirty mobile experts it became clear that the mobile marketing industry is still not fully understood by agencies and advertisers. Because of the multiple mobile marketing possibilities, agencies and advertisers tend to get confused and switch off. However, the industry is working on this issue and looking at the amount of media agencies starting their own mobile division, we’re really getting there. These specialized agencies understand how the mobile medium works and are well in place to educate the advertising industry and show them the true power of mobile.

Meanwhile, the mobile marketing agencies and mobile advertising sales houses are evangelizing as much as they possibly can. Everyone who works in this industry will be well known with the first ten slides of every mobile presentation or media pack. They’re basically only saying how wonderful mobile is, and that it’s really (really!) going to be big and already very effective. Recently I was working on a mobile media pack too, and I came across the graph below. It’s saying that among 16 to 24 olds mobile is the medium they could least do without. Nice one for the demographics section.

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