The Herald Tribune has taken a look at the current and potential future state of mobile advertising, and the outlook is less than rosy. Currently, mobile advertising counts for around $1 billion a year — an impressive-sounding figure which sounds much less impressive when you realize that it’s two tenths of one percent of the global figures. Beyond that, most of that comes from text messaging campaigns, instead of ad-funded games or commercials on mobile TV. No one likes ads, of course, but they’re important to drive the growth of any industry, and they help in getting you free goodies. Unfortunately, analysts can’t agree on how fast it will grow (if at all), with estimates ranging from $7.6 billon to $25 billion by 2013.
There are many problems in the way of mobile advertising. For mobile TV, it’s hard for the average consumer to get a chance at it. AT&T’s recently announced TV service is available for all of 2 phones, and Nokia’s TV service is about the same. It’s difficult if not impossible to convince advertisers to buy into it with such a limited base of eyeballs. And if text messaging accounts for the bulk of advertising money spent today, then mobile gaming can’t be doing all that well, despite the attempts of ad-funded free game portals like Greystripe.
It’s a bit of a chicken or egg problem. People simply aren’t going to buy into services that are limited in features or availability, but advertisers are not going to be keen on funding them until there’s a bigger subscriber base. It’s likely going to take a carrier to dive into it with both feet and take a gamble on something — mobile TV is a pretty good bet — so that both consumers and advertisers have a reason to take the bet.
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