Where things stand (really)

There has a been a lot of excitement about mobile advertising recently. All of us are very happy that things are finally moving. AdMob has been on the front page of the WSJ and was featured as one of the "Next Net 25" in Business 2.0. Other companies in the mobile advertising space have been getting tons of attention as well.

There are many individuals in both the mobile and the advertising space who are calling for some conservatism when it comes to how we think about mobile advertising today. I think that makes a great deal of sense. A recent article by Fred Ghahramani, the CEO of AirG, breaks it down quite well. While I don't agree with everything he says, his sentiment certainly rings true.


(i got the chart idea from here)

Ultimately billions of impressions does not equal billions of dollars. While I can say for sure that mobile advertising is light years ahead of where it was last year, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, either. The last thing this industry needs is a standard hype cycle (tm) --Don't worry Gartner, check is on the way-- in which 12 months from now everyone is disappointed that their voice and data charges are still not completely subsidized by advertising. We would do well to remember that worldwide the wireless carriers bring in 1.2 trillion (with a "t") dollars in revenue. Advertising online is still "only" a 16 billion dollar industry. Obviously, even if mobile advertising spend were as large as it is online, it would still be three zeros short of solving that problem.

What I can say for sure, however, is that mobile advertising is happening in a very real way today. It will, in fact, be an industry measured in the billions (of dollars) in the not too distant future. It will change the way much of the content we consume on our phones is monetized, and it will serve as a catalyst for change in the mobile landscape as a whole. The business of mobile advertising has in every way exceeded our expectations (we 6x'd our 2006 predictions) and it is an industry that can exceed the market's expectations as well, as long as we can keep those expectations within reason.

- omar