In-Brief: Chetan Sharma, independent consultant, mobile luminary and a co-author of the just released book, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market, urges mobile operators to start acting like media companies, and gives them 2-3 years to get their act together before the Googles, Yahoos, Microsofts and Nokias of the world change the rules of the game – forever.

Of all the podcasts I’ve produced to date, this has been the toughest. The material was just too good to cut – but I had to in order to deliver the length you have told me you prefer. So, I do have a podcast of less than 15 minutes. Fortunately, Chetan understands my dilemma and is intrigued by the idea of coming back to MSG for a series of podcasts to deep-dive into the exciting mobile advertising case studies he has collected and elaborate on the do’s & don’ts of targeting. It’s safe to say Chetan will be back – and so should you!

One comment that struck me: Chetan is firm but fair in his plea to operators to focus on cultivating an ecosystem rather than compete with other mobile operators. But not all mobile operators are “thinking in their own little universe.” He gives high marks to Vodafone and Reliance for having a radical and refreshing view of the marketplace.

Listen to the podcast here. [10:55]

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As he put it: “They have a different view of the advertising space. And their view of the competition is that the competitors aren’t really [other] operators, but other mediums. So if a dollar is going to TV, then that’s their competition, not a dollar going to their rival [operator].

Other highlights:

Operator assets: Operators should “focus on the unique capabilities that they have from their network and devices and expose that to the ecosystem.” That model is more compelling – and potentially more profitable – than “trying to control and become an agency themselves.”

Google & Co: Operators have the analytics – but time is a luxury they don’t have. Figure it’s 2-3 years before other providers close the gap to offer profiling, presence and location, and the metrics advertisers demand. “In the long run, the challenge will be: Will it [customer data etc...] come from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and some other companies [as they] will have these unique characteristics [and capabilities] as well.” In three years, Chetan reckons “online brands will start to dominate the ecosystem….But if carriers are able to pool together their resources and make a very compelling offer to the media industry…they [carriers] can put up very stiff resistance to online brands.”

Mobile search: Mobile search will play an important role on mobile, but it won’t dominate the mobile Internet or advertising experience. “I think the idle screen plays this role in the long run on the mobile. And I think you’ll see more friction and fights [as companies] try to capture the idle screen user.

We should not think of search as a box, “but rather an intelligent [bot] that searches for relevant content for you and presents that content with relevant ads on the idle screen. If you think of search in that way, then search has a very important role to play. But just searching by key words will probably have a smaller role to play in the long term.

The ones to watch: Chetan and I ran through some case studies and stats from the likes of NearBy Now, which gets high marks for engagement, and mobile Posse, which gets high marks for targeting. I’ll take Chetan’s comments as a cue to line up an interview with each – in fact, I already reached out to NearbyNow for a podcast timed to their next announcement (under embargo)…In the meantime, it’s interesting to note that no company got high marks across all five metrics: reach, engagement, targeting, viral and transactions. (Transaction is the “Holy grail” of mobile advertising, where an ad delivers a sale). As Chetan observed: It’s just early days.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, On-Device Portals, Personalization, Podcasts. 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.