visiongain: 2006 Will Be the Year of Mobile Advertising Experimentation

According to visiongain, "2006 will be a year of experimentation for the emerging mobile advertising market." visiongain predicts that "the next five years will see a shift by major brands from simple SMS mobile marketing to more sophisticated multimedia advertising. By 2007, brands will know what works, and mobile advertising will become mainstream by 2008."

visiongain forecasts that "from 2005, when the nascent market garnered $255 million in Europe and the United States, mobile marketing and advertising in these two geographical areas will grow to exceed $1 billion in 2009." The firm attributes this to the increasing availability of multimedia content.

Marcia Kaplan at visiongain said, "The mobile phone is a very personal device that most people carry with them 24 hours a day. It affords advertisers an opportunity to present very targeted and time-sensitive information that is of interest to the user. That is a key advantage. With customer permission, advertisers can collect valuable demographic and behavioural information to hone the marketing message."

She added, "3G technology enables the delivery of richer content to mobile phone users, but there is a limit to how many additional charges and subscriptions mobile phone users will accept. At some point, content will have to be sponsored or partially subsidised by advertising. We are also seeing the emergence of ad-subsidised MVNOs, which plan to offer free airtime in exchange for targeted advertising to subscribers."