AdAge is telling us that 2008 is not the year for mobile marketing and lays out five reasons why that is so.  It’s a good article as it helps cut into the hype while showing the there are solutions on the way.

One criticism I’ll make is that we all often too often make is that the progress of trends can be measured in calendar years.  While it’s true that corporate marketing budgets are measured in fiscal calendars, actual trends are more measured in technological advances and increases in adoption rates.

Here are the five reasons:

  1. Limited reach (relative to the web)
  2. Measurement hurdles
  3. Complexity of running campaigns, especially ensuring they work on all platforms and devices
  4. Mobile marketing being considered in a silo
  5. Lack of a “hallelujah moment” for mobile

The first four make sense to me.  The last one doesn’t.  We rarely have a “hallelujah” moment for anything.  It’s more often the case that we look back and realize that we’re doing thing differently now than what we were three years ago.

David Berkowitz, over at Marketer’s Studio, lays it out by saying that 2008 - and every year beyond - will be “A” year for mobile, not “THE” year.

In a move that’s sure create both interest and controversy, CBS Mobile has teamed up with social networking company Loopt to offer location-based ads on CBS Mobile News and CBS Mobile Sports.

It’s going to be using Loopt’s GPS technology. The Mountain View company, which was started by Stanford University sophomores Sam Altman and Nick Sivo in 2005, creates software that allows people to track the location of their friends via their mobile phone connection.

That probably means they were like, nineteen. Holy crap. When I was nineteen and in college, I was looking for the nearest keg. Found them too, even without GPS. Anyway…

Right now the system will only be available on phones that are GPS ready and that have carriers that have an agreement with Loopt. Namely, Sprint and Boost. Loopt is in negotiations with other carriers.

At this point, CBS hasn’t lined up any advertises yet - some are understandably skittish - but that will likely come. I’m betting there’s a wait and see attitude here. I’m also betting that someone is going to get a great deal if they go first.

All plans for it are to be opt-in, which I think is an absolute must. You don’t want people to have some nasty surprises. But what I don’t see is relevance. I don’t see any plans (at least yet) that allows a participant to chose what types of stores they’d like to receive ads from. That may not be a problem with a coffee shop, but if it means clothing retailers it could get confusing. Men and women don’t wear the same type of clothes.

Overall, I think this is a great idea. It may drive some users nuts and they may want to end up turning it off. But instead, I think this will be a new, and successful, way of advertising.





Yeah, I know. You hate commercials. You hate the sudden interruption of your favorite show to see three, four, or five thirty-second poorly created hard-to-differentiate video presentations on a product you don’t like, don’t want, don’t need, or don’t use.

Me too.

You want to get back to the show, the game, the newscast. See the bad guy get his ass nailed, the final two minutes of the tight game, or news on the latest scoop on the election cycle. The last thing you want to see is a series of presentations about pills that can make you pee better, a car that supposedly makes you cool, and a law firm that chases ambulances.

Me too.

But every once and a while, you’ll watch something that will catch your eye. It will make you laugh. Chuckle inside. You’ll be able to relate to it. Or you’ll be impressed because it’s impressive, not because the commercial is trying to pretend that it’s impressive with itself. Or you’ll think, shit, how did they do that?

Me too.

If that’s what happens, then that’s a commercial that will likely end up on Firebrand.

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This past Wednesday I attended an excellent forum on Capitol Hill put on by the New Politics Institute. Entitled “Social Networking Tools in Politics”, it featured both excellent speakers and content. The Institute bills itself as a think tank dedicated to helping progressives better understand today’s politics in todays everchaning technology, media, and demographics.

Director Peter Leyden handled the event featuring Facebook Chief Security Officer Chris Kelly, Grassroots.com President and CEO John Hlinko, Cheryl Contee of Flieshman Hillard’s San Francisco office, Change.org’s Ben Rattay, and Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democratic Network and a founder and officer of NPI.

The crux of the program was part how-to and part what’s-in-store for 2008 and beyond.

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So the news came out the other day that Google has released another product into the market known as Android. This one, I must say, has some interesting potential. It is open source software that will run on cell phones. What is so exciting is that up until this point the software running on cell phones was proprietary and closed. Therefore, you had no truly full powered web browser and each site had to be in some way customized to run on the different OS platforms - like Palm OS and other platforms specific to the actual handset - now we have a software choice that will work on multiple handsets. This new development means that all of a sudden all types of applications can be created to run on cell phones, opening up the market to a whole array of new options.

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