In-Brief: A summary of news and a preview of a thought-provoking guest column from Andrew Grill, a senior exec at Seeker Wireless, whose independent blog represents an essential read on mobile advertising, mobile location and local search.

I’m preparing for Mobile Search & Advertising Forum 2008, what I’m sure will be an excellent and worthwhile event organized by Wireless World Forum, an industry organization MSG is proud to have listed in the Knowledge Sharing section of this site. I greatly look forward to using my day trip to London tomorrow a.m. (Monday) to connect with attendees during the breaks and networking sessions. I’ll circle back with more analysis and commentary Tuesday latest – when I’m back in the office. BTW: You can see videos of my latest presentation and panel discussion at the mobile search event organized by Visiongain – as well as presentations by esteemed colleagues Farhad Divecha, Director, AccuraCast, and others – here. Thanks again to Farhad for producing and posting the videos. Again, if you want to be considered for inclusion in my mobile search & recommendation report, which I am writing on behalf of Visiongain, then please contact my PA directly – andrea@msearchgroove.com

In the meantime, I would also like to thank the delegates/attendees who have contacted me for briefings during tomorrow’s mobile search forum. It will be a special pleasure to meet up with Andrew Grill, who has graciously offered to contribute a guest column on location services to MSG, joining the growing roster of authors and experts who share my personal vision to make MSG a knowledge-sharing portal and resource for the mobile industry.

It couldn’t be better timing if we consider the play Google got for the bullish statement by CEO Eric Schmidt during Davos. He is convinced the arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a “huge revolution.” Andrew has some insightful comments on his blog. And, because he misses a deeper discussion of mobile-specific factors, he has started one – a dialogue I hope many MSG readers will join. Andrew correctly points out that Schmidt’s comments raise more questions than they answer.

Of Schmidt’s eye-opening statement – “It’s the recreation of the Internet, it’s the recreation of the PC” – Andrew notes “this makes us all sit up and take notice, but the real question should be have we taken note of all the innovations and mistakes made with the original concept for web advertising and are we ensuring we don’t make the same mistakes in mobile. The answer is probably no.”

I would take it a step further and question whether advertising based on a single context will cut it.

As I have stated in many articles and presentations, location is a must-have ingredient in the mix (and the industry is with me on this one); however, I also contend that other context information such as profile, preference and past purchasing behavior are also essential. Operators have it, portal/search companies like Google don’t – so it will indeed be interesting to see how this tension plays out. To borrow from Andrew’s closing remarks: Watch this space – 2008 will be a big year, Eric Schmidt said so!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.