At Mobile World Congress, the Mobile Advertising Association forms to take marketing mobile

Mobile advertising is slowly moving from an untapped source of revenue to a value-added service for customers and carriers alike. To expedite the process, the Mobile Advertising Alliance (MAA), an association of mobile software companies, was announced in advance of Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona. The alliance promises to bring the potential of advertising and direct marketing to mobile phone network across the globe.

The association will allow operators to pick and choose amongst various vendor components to build their advertising platforms. Systems integrators can incorporate the different software platforms within their existing infrastructure with the goal of monetizing that environment for the carrier. The venture’s software vendor members include Anam for mobile messaging; Cibenix for on-device portal platforms; Mobile Cohesion for content partnerships; Openet for event processing and transaction management solutions; and SLA Mobile, which provides the mobile operator with a platform for targeted advertising.

Nic Stirk, COO of SLA Mobile said that the MAA will work closely with standardization initiatives like the GSM Association and the Mobile Marketing Association to help define best practices across the industry. The alliance members have existing carrier relationships with AT&T and Verizon in the US, as well as several others across the globe.

“In line with many analysts, we estimate from our discussions with key industry players that mobile advertising revenues globally should reach a few billions dollars this year, so this is very much a tipping point in terms of scale,” Stirk said in an email interview. “Also, as more operators are gaining experience with this relatively new medium and end-users see the point of accepting advertising on their mobile device - provided it is relevant and unobtrusive - we're on the cusp of a major market being realized.”

According to analyst firm Gartner, the purported major market may reach $11 billion in global revenue from mobile advertising by 2011, up from less than $1 billion a year in 2007. Thus far, mobile advertising and direct marketing has been an area of much promise, but little action. The hold up has been largely due to concerns over consumer’s privacy issues, as well as technical hurdles surrounding the small screen and keyboard size, small number of GPS-enabled phones and poor quality of the mobile browsing experience, although this may also be improving.

According to mobile content company Bango, the lack of independent mobile analytics is also impeding mobile marketing initiatives. Unrelated to the MAA, Bango today also launched an analytic platform, which it claims is the first to treat mobile handsets as a unique entity. The product, called Bango Analytics, delivers mobile focused web stats to carriers on how their consumers interact with mobile websites and which marketing campaigns are most effective. Essentially, the service answers the five essential questions: who, what when, where and why as it relates to their customers’ mobile Web activity.

“The opportunity is clearly very exciting,” said Anil Malhotra, vice president of marketing and co-founder of Bango. “The sheer size and penetration of mobile users is undeniable and I think there is this idea that is being realized and understood and acted upon at the moment…. In order for people to feel good about it, they have to have a way to measure how that advertising is being received. That is particularly important in mobile where there are so many unknowns.”

Amongst other statistics, these unknowns include the handset type, consumer’s language, their ability to buy, which carrier they are on, if they use a credit card and whether they have visited that site before, Malhotra said.

Both Bango and the Mobile Advertising Association will be exhibiting at the MWC in Barcelona next week.