Whatevercash.com.....How a 15-year-old's hobby became a $50,000-to-$70,000-a-month business.

Girls between the ages of 12 and 19 have an estimated $87 billion in buying power, according to market research firm TRU, and Ashley Qualls's Whateverlife.com attracts millions of them each month.

What's Free

So far, all the content: more than 2,600 social-networking page layouts that users cut and paste onto their MySpace and VampireFreaks profiles, as well as forums, advice columns, and Web-site-building tools.

What Pays

Advertising placed by Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) AdSense--Ashley's first source of revenue and still responsible for 60% of total revenue--and ValueClick (NASDAQ:VCLK) Media, a smaller ad network. Rates depend on traffic and page views. Google's cut is about 40%, Ashley says.

Nabbr splits revenue generated by its desktop widget, which plays music videos on the site. Ashley passes along to her fans CDs and signed photos of artists provided by Nabbr.

Businesses such as myYearbook.com have contacted Ashley directly to advertise on her site. With no intermediary to take a cut, it's far more lucrative.

What's Next

Pitching potential direct advertisers. Plus, cell-phone wallpaper downloads for 99 cents to $1.99 apiece scheduled to launch by September.

Facebook, NetVibes Launch iPhone Sites

TechCrunch
Facebook has released a new iPhone-specific mobile site. Mashable calls it "stunning." The Facebook mobile site can be viewed at iphone.facebook.com, but if you aren't experiencing it on an iPhone, it really isn't much to look at.

On the iPhone, however, critics unanimously agree the site is pretty amazing. Like the NetVibes iPhone site that launched on Tuesday, the site uses javascript, and owing to a defect in the iPhone, there's some lag in moving around the site. But this is the only black mark the site received; otherwise, navigation is seamless and the design is a perfect fit for the mobile device, which makes great use of the iPhone's ability to view pages horizontally.

NetVibes, the customizable home page that competes with My Yahoo, iGoogle and others, has also released a pre-beta version of its iPhone site. TechCrunch says it does an even better job on the iPhone as an RSS Reader. Look for more iPhone-specific sites in the future--especially as sales pick up. - Read the whole story...

Mobile Users Picky About Ads

JULY 9, 2007

Mobile marketers run the gauntlet.

More than four in five US adults own a mobile phone, yet only 30% of mobile phone owners recall seeing or hearing a mobile ad in the past year, according to an Ingenio survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

Nearly two-thirds of mobile phone owners said their phones were very personal to them. Mobile users also had definite preferences about what types of ads they found acceptable. Sponsored text links had the most favorable responses, followed by audio ads that played instead of the usual ringing when waiting for someone to answer a call.

As in any campaign, targeting is crucial in mobile marketing. Nearly 70% of respondents deleted mobile ads, and only about 10% took some type of positive action in response. The key is getting to the right 10%.

Mobile ad spending in the US is expected to reach nearly $5 billion in 2011, up from $421 million in 2006.

eMarketer Senior Analyst John Gauntt predicted how the US mobile ad market will develop:

"After a lot of hand-wringing and some spectacular successes — as well as flameouts — mobile operators, brands and consumers will learn from each other about what works and what does not work, just like they did for online."

See how your mobile marketing campaign matches current trends. Read the eMarketer Mobile Marketing and Advertising report.

US Mobile Web Use Surges Ahead, Increasing 3-Fold over the Last Year

The UK based mobile billing company, Bango has published statistics which confirm that the United States is at the forefront of mobile web growth with a three fold increase in usage over the last year, taking it to second position behind the UK. The increasing popularity of mobile search as a way of finding new content and services is fueling this rapid rise in mobile web usage.

By working as a "global exchange" for the mobile web, Bango is able to provide an insight into where mobile users are coming from and what handsets they are using. The Bango platform detects users from more than 190 countries accessing the mobile web.

According to Bango data, the top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango in April 2007 are the UK at 27%, the US at 21%, South Africa at 11%, India at 9% and Indonesia at 3%.

In the first quarter of 2007 the top handset was the Sanyo Katana SCP 6600. The fact that the Sanyo Katana is only available in the United States reflects the rapid growth in mobile surfing by US mobile users. Other popular handsets included the Motorola V360, the Sony Ericsson K750i and the Samsung A900.

"We see that wherever flat-rate data charges are pervasive in a country then there's much more web browsing," said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango. "We expect to see more competitively priced flat-rate data plans in the US which will stimulate further web browsing."

Bango also has detected a rapid increase in the number of mobile surfers coming from India. Now 9% of all accesses to mobile websites are from India, up from 4% a year ago. India, with a population of just over 1,000 million and lack of an established fixed phone line network, relies on mobile phones to stay in touch. Here, mobile web usage is set to exceed European levels within the next few years.

"What we're seeing through these numbers is a transformation of the internet from something connected to a desktop to something mobile," said Malhotra. "With the advent of mobile search that transformation is happening on a truly global scale."

Giveaways Key to Mobile Marketing

JUNE 4, 2007

Would you watch ads for a free phone?

Mobile advertising will generate $2.3 billion in revenues in the US by 2011, according to EJL Wireless Research's "Global Mobile Advertising Market Analysis 2006-2011."

The firm expects mobile couponing to be the largest ad segment, accounting for 42% of the overall market by 2011.

Earl Lum of EJL said, "We believe that the recent transaction involving Third Screen Media and AOL is the tip of the M&A iceberg for the mobile advertising industry and anticipate and recommend a significant consolidation of the industry to create market efficiencies that will eventually lead to explosive growth."

eMarketer's own projections for the US mobile ad market made in January 2007 covered spending, not revenues, and had the market passing $2.3 billion in 2009.

While mobile couponing may be the secret for global mobile marketing, giveaways are the ticket in the US, according to an April 2007 AirG study. Nearly half of respondents said that they would accept ads on their phones in exchange for a free service or chance to win a prize.

More than a third of said they would watch more than 10 ads a day to get a free phone.

Although a free phone or free phone service may be alluring, individual phone applications had less appeal to respondents in a Harris Interactive poll conducted in October 2006. Just over half were not at all willing to watch ads in exchange for applications. The remaining 49% had a slightly negative to neutral reaction to the proposition.

Mobile Ad Biz Comes of Age

Broadcast mobile video is likely to be a huge source of spending by 2011. Carriers and advertisers have to bring their message to the public

The world market for mobile marketing and advertising is expected to be worth about $3 billion by the end of 2007, and is likely to reach $19 billion in value by 2011 if mobile search and video advertising is included.

A recent study from ABI Research said some of the highest levels of spending will come in the broadcast mobile video space, with spending for broadcast mobile video advertising alone expected to hit $9 billion by 2011. By 2011, the report said mobile video will surpass SMS as a source of mobile marketing spending, due in part to mobile broadcast networks' presence in all major markets.

But for this market to reach its full potential, the New York-based research firm said carriers, advertisers, and marketing companies must utilize multiple technologies and business models to bring their messages to mobile consumers.

"Mobile advertising and marketing is a risky, albeit enticing business," said Judith Rosall, principal analyst at ABI Research. "Unlike the PC, a mobile device offers a uniquely personalized communications channel. Carriers worldwide have quite a bit of information about their end-users: name, sex, age, geographical location. And depending on the handset and plan their users have purchased, the carriers probably also know something about their economic status and credit record. But they don't like to release this information to third parties because they want to protect and control their customers."

Mobile marketing and advertising is also at varying levels of maturity, depending on the market or country, according to Rosall. In Europe and Asia, mobile marketing is fairly well developed. However, early-adopting brands in the US are still in the process of testing the water. They don't typically allocate a set percentage of their annual budgets to mobile, the report emphasized.

In turn, major ad agencies are still relatively inexperienced with mobile marketing campaigns, and reluctant to utilize location-based services and technologies such as MMS and mobile search that are still in the early stages of deployment. Their slow pace in exploiting opportunities in mobile marketing and advertising, however, has opened the door for a number of specialized agencies, aggregators, and other enablers, the report said.

Mobile Ads Crawling Along

APRIL 3, 2007

Text from mobile marketers: 'U 1st.'

Mobile data use has doubled since 2003, but mobile marketing is still taking baby steps, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

The study claimed that only 13% of interactive marketers used text messaging to reach consumers in December 2006.

When asked what would convince them to spend marketing dollars on mobile-enabled sites, mobile text messages, branded microsites, podcasts, in-game ads, RSS and other emerging areas, most of the companies questioned in the Forrester study said "proof of use."

Just because a lot of people have mobile phones does not mean that marketers are ready to start sending ads to all of them, according to eMarketer Mobile Analyst John du Pre Gauntt.

"Mobile marketing/advertising draws passionate viewpoints, both pro and con," says Mr. Gauntt, "ranging from those who want it to jumpstart a sluggish mobile content and data market, to those who want to protect mobile from the marketing cacophony that infests every other media platform."

Response rates for marketers who do connect are compelling. A Dunkin' Donuts-sponsored mobile campaign in downtown Boston used SMS mobile coupons for new latte drinks. Consumers got coupons through a geographically targeted WAP campaign on various Boston mobile Web sites. The campaign generated a 4% click-through rate that converted into a 21% increase in store traffic from customers redeeming their coupons.

There are plenty of people ready to get such promotions, according to an ROI Research study commissioned by Bluestreak. Among those who used e-mail and one of five other emerging technologies, 88% of respondents used text messaging, second only to e-mail.

As much as Japan is trumpeted as the future of mobile data, and far ahead of the US in mobile marketing, the US and Canada still have a scale that makes up for the rudimentary state of North American mobile marketing.

And it's not as if marketers aren't talking about mobile marketing, according to a survey taken at the recent CTIA mobile industry association conference by LogicaCMG Telecoms.

Wayne Irwin of Logica summed up mobile marketer sentiment as revealed by the survey.

"The most important word here is 'relevant,'" said Mr. Irwin. "The mobile industry is approaching advertising very cautiously, and is watching consumer adoption very closely to ensure success. Done well, if it's relevant and targeted, mobile advertising can help drive down costs to the consumer while helping grow revenues for the mobile operator."

One Third of Internet Users Have Logged on Wirelessly

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Some 34% of internet users have logged onto the internet using a wireless connection either around the house, at their workplace, or some place else. In other words, one-third of internet users, either with a laptop computer, a handheld personal digital assistant (PDA), or cell phone, have surfed the internet or checked email using means such as WiFi broadband or cell phone networks.

Facts About Wireless Use (among internet users)

Those who have logged on wirelessly from a place other than home or work
27%
Those who have wireless networks in their homes
19
Those with personal digital assistants that are able to connect to the internet wirelessly
13
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project December 2006

Users of wireless access show deeper engagement with cyberspace when focusing on email and news. Among the 34% of internet users who have gone online wirelessly:
72% of wireless users check email on the typical day, compared to 63% of home broadband users and 54% of all internet users.
46% get news online on the typical day, compared to 38% of home broadband users and 31% of all internet users.

The report notes that the differences between wireless and home broadband users are statistically significant and notable because most wireless users (80%) have broadband connections at home.

When asked about the places they connect to the internet by wireless means:

27% of adult internet users have logged onto the internet using a wireless device at some place other than their home or place of employment.
20% of internet users have gone online at home using a wireless network.
17% of internet users have connected wirelessly while at work.
25% of internet users have gone online wirelessly from two of the three places; put differently, three-quarters of all those who have logged onto the internet using a wireless network have done this from more than one of the types of places queried. Specifically, among laptop users whose machines are capable of connecting to the internet wirelessly:
88% of laptop users have at one time logged on using a home wireless network.
57% have used a wireless network someplace other than home or work to connect to the internet.
36% have logged using a wireless network at work.
The growth in wireless networks at home has fueled the use of laptops to connect wirelessly around the house. 19% of internet users have wireless networks at home, which is twice the number recorded in January 2005. Those with laptops and home wireless networks take advantage of in-house mobility; three-quarters of these users say they move their laptop around to different parts of the house
25% of internet users say they have a cell phone that connects to the internet with a wireless connection. Among internet users with this capability on their cell phone, 54% have used it to get on the internet either at home, work, or someplace other than home or work.
Among those with cell phones that can connect to the internet:
47% have done this someplace other than home or work.
28% have done this at work.
27% have done this while at home.

Personal digital assistants (PDAs): One in eight (13%) internet users have a PDA that can connect to the internet using a wireless network. Of these, most (82%) have used it to connect at home, work, or someplace other than home or work.
Specifically:
56% of those with a web-enabled PDA have used it to access the internet or email away from home or work.
49% have done this with their PDA at home.
38% have used their PDA to connect to the web or email at work.
Users of the wireless internet tend to be younger than internet users in general. For internet users under the age of 30:
37% have logged on wirelessly from anywhere.
32% have logged on wirelessly from someplace other than home or work.
25% log on wirelessly at home.
16% have gotten online by wireless means at work.
As to devices for accessing the internet wirelessly, among internet users under 30:
40% have laptop computers, of which 88% are wireless-enabled.
26% have wireless networks at home.
40% have cell phones that can access the internet
17% have PDAs that can connect to the internet.

This table offers a fuller demographic portrait of internet users who have used a wireless connection to go online compared to online users who have not done this.

Make Mobile Marketing Compelling

Make Mobile Marketing Compelling

Without restrictive networks and high fees, mobile marketing will soon reach new highs.
Part of the reality of this industry is a tendency to zealously promote particular technologies for a short period of time. Years ago, it was mobile, then it was Second Life, and now Nintendo's Wii looks like it might turn out to be the next big thing. The hype machines never stop chugging, but I believe it's time to give mobile a second, sober look.
Over the past several years, there has been a lot of talk about the potential of mobile marketing, but the reality of the medium has yet to be realized. Finally, it seems like the technology has begun to catch up with those possibilities. Until now, most of the discussion on how to leverage these always-on, never-leave-home-without-them devices as an ad delivery network has been focused around SMS, which is not a particularly good example of an advanced marketing technique. But that text-centric point of view is about to change. When Apple launched the iPhone, it jolted our senses with a very new form factor and a technological backbone that makes many new cool things possible.
The biggest question about mobile marketing is what it is good for. There are many applications, but in order to be successful, we need to ask ourselves what will be useful for both advertiser and consumer. Right now, the applications are, for the most part, limited to "SMS to win" and e-coupons. There is no killer app in the mobile marketing world right now beyond consumers making a call to talk to someone. Beyond a few preliminary successes and failures, I'm sad to say that mobile marketing to this point has been a non-starter. There is really nothing out there that has wowed consumers, just yet.
Let's take a step back and look at things from a larger perspective. A mobile device is an always-on computer with built-in connectivity. These little computer devices are getting much smarter and more useful, improving the design with better screens, better interfaces, cooler applications and more useful operating systems. Apple took these improvements to another level, and in many ways the iPhone was less a phone than a canvas with which to do cool things. Given the public response to the launch, we can only bet that most manufacturers will soon follow suit.
Now is the time to start thinking about mobile marketing in a compelling and interesting way. But before we start planning campaigns, we have to look at what mobile marketing really is and what things can be created.
Mobile is a "be there at the right time and place" medium. It's also a bit of a long tail form of media because, for the most part, it's more about pull than push, unless you're buying commercials for mobile video. Mobile means "on the go," and mobile marketing must therefore provide the consumer with something that is useful to them in the field. In these contexts, there are six main strategies for using mobile as a marketing tool:

See Into the Future of Mobile Markets

MARCH 9, 2007

Marketers are looking to the Japanese mobile market as a model of the converged media future.

What stands out in the Japanese mobile market is the fact that innovation is shifting toward business models and marketing tactics as opposed to technical features and functions.

"The explosion of non-official mobile content Web sites is causing the sun to set on the i-mode business model of a dominant mobile carrier selling incremental content and services to its user base," says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Japan Wireless: Marketing to a Mobile Society report. "Flat-rate pricing for 3G services and a broadening of the scope of industries with a strong interest in mobile services means that mobile marketing and advertising has become all the more important in Japan."

According to Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the number of Japanese mobile subscribers has been inching up only slightly over the past year.

In February 2007, Japan passed the 100 million mark for mobile subscribers. Effectively, that means the country is fully penetrated with advanced wireless services and only the extremes of society (the extremely young, the extremely old, the extremely poor) are not served by mobile services.

More important for marketers, Japan's mobile environment is now fully ramped into 3G services. According to MIC figures, the number of 3G subscribers for all carriers now exceeds 60 million.

With full penetration of mobile — and advanced penetration of 3G — wireless captures much of the Internet-based activity of the Japanese public.

eMarketer estimates that approximately 70% of the Japanese population, or 89 million people, is connected to Internet, usually by high-speed connections.

Of that Internet population, mobile just edges out the PC platform as the preferred access device.

"In a sentence, the good news is that marketing has just about trumped technical features and functionality for reaching Japanese consumers," says Mr. Gauntt.

For example, the best-selling handset in Japan at present is Motorola's Razr, a phone that sports neither a video camera nor a mobile wallet, technical features that are standard on most other Japanese models.

"Instead, consumers are attracted to the cultural fashion statement offered by the Razr's sleek physical design," says Mr. Gauntt. "But the Razr story is not simply one of consumers channeling their function fatigue into a 'retro' product. The marketing of the Razr to the Japanese public was a textbook case of integrating celebrity endorsement, social networking, mass media and targeted messaging."

The classic i-mode business that launched the mobile Internet in Japan is declining. Whereas just two years ago the proportion of official i-mode sites ("official" meaning that the customer bought content and/or services through his or her DoCoMo billing relationship) vs. non-official mobile sites was about 70-30 in favor of the former, the ratio has flipped circa 2007. Now, the prevailing trend for new mobile Web sites as well as consumer time and money is for the non-official experience.

"Japan's situation is well advanced compared with mobile markets in North America and many parts of Europe, where the primary value proposition seems to revolve around a singular technical niche, such as the music phone, TV phone or e-mail phone," says Mr. Gauntt. "Yet all major advanced markets seem to be converging toward a kind of maturity beyond novelty features."

Summing up, Mr. Gauntt says, "Being among the first fully converged, fully mature media societies, Japan offers marketers a valuable lens for benchmarking where they are heading."

Barcodes transformed into web links

• The point and click world of mobile ads is beckoning, but there are problems, writes Richard Waters in San Francisco

  ---

• March 07, 2007

READERS of some French magazines were greeted late last year with an unusual invitation in an advertisement for the Audi Q7. They were asked to point the cameras in their mobile phones at a special code in the advertisements. That would connect them automatically to a website that streamed video of the vehicle in action. It only worked, though, if they first downloaded an extra piece of software.

That is a big "if". The potential for turning mobile phones into devices capable of "reading" information in the physical world and connecting it back to the internet has been a dream of the mobile communications industry for years. Like many of the other visions of how the "mobile internet" would take shape, however, it has yielded far less than the optimists had hoped.

To judge by the Audi experiments, and others, a more concerted effort is under way to get this technology into the hands of a bigger audience. If it succeeds, it could turn out to be the first successful manifestation of advertising in the mobile data world.

For now, such ads have limited appeal, as even the technology companies behind them concede. Christian Steinborn, European head of NeoMedia, the US technology group involved in the Audi experiment, says few mobile phone users will bother to download the software needed to read so-called "2D barcodes", which are versions of the more familiar Universal Product Codes capable of being "read" more easily by a camera phone.

That has not stopped other advertisers, consumer product companies and publishers rushing to experiment with the technology. Prompting this latest burst of interest have been the first signs from Japan and South Korea of widespread consumer interest in the technology, according to technology and marketing professionals.

For instance, British Sunday newspaper News of the World, owned by News Corp, is considering printing 2D barcodes with its sports reports so that readers can link to highlights of football games. The codes could also soon appear on consumer products after a decision last month by DuPont, which supplies bottles, cans and other types of packaging, to start offering to print the codes for its customers.

The potential of 2D barcodes extends well beyond their uses in marketing and the offline media industry.

"Navigating the web on a phone is a nightmare," says Jonathan Bulkeley, head of Scanbuy, another specialist technology company. By making it possible for mobile users to connect to a web page with a simple "point and click" of their phones, barcodes could take the pain out of mobile surfing, he says. That, in turn, could create a new layer of linkages between the physical and electronic worlds, says Chas Fritz, head of NeoMedia. Imagine if a unique barcode were printed on every physical object: you could point your camera phone and find out everything you wanted to know about it.

Such uses might eventually turn 2D barcodes into the hyperlinks of the physical world, as common and easy to navigate as the links that let users follow links easily around the internet.

That hope was the impetus behind the Mobile Codes Consortium, an initiative just launched by Hewlett-Packard, Publicis, the marketing services company, and NeoMedia to push for greater technology standardisation in this area.

While publishers and marketers are starting their own experiments with the use of 2D barcodes, widespread adoption is likely to depend on organisations that have the power to put the technology into millions of consumers' hands: mobile network operators and handset makers. DoCoMo's support of the idea was central to its adoption in Japan, according to technology executives. And Nokia has started to pre-load software capable of reading 2D barcodes in some handsets.

Eventually, mobile operators could come to see barcode-driven advertising as a significant source of revenue, Bulkeley says. A former head of AOL in Britain, he compares the mobile companies to the early internet service providers, with their total reliance on monthly subscription income. Eventually, with the emergence of advertising, the subscription business died away.

If that comparison holds, the mobile industry will have incentives to promote mobile barcodes, potentially putting the technology into the hands of anyone with a camera phone.

Mobile Social Networking Opens The Door For Advertisers

by Cory Treffiletti, Wednesday, Feb 28, 2007 4:00 PM ET
http://publications.mediapost.com/?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=56293

MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING -- I have to admit that this one takes me a little by surprise, but only because I hadn't thought of the implications and the ways that it could be used. It hit me while I was flying this week to Orlando for a series of meetings and catching up on the reading I let pile up while I was busy the previous week. Time magazine, my continued source for the establishment of mainstream thinking, wrote an article concerning mobile social networking and some of the tools being developed to allow customers to keep tabs on their friends using mobile GPS devices and software integrated into their cell phones.
The part of the article that woke me up was the part about the guy who checked in on his roommate, saw that she was at Wendy's, so he called her up and asked her to pick up some 99-cent chicken sandwiches. That single sentence launched a plethora of epiphanies in my head and probably the heads of many other entrepreneurial advertising execs. There was finally a concept that resonated in the mind of the consumer with an obvious marketing extension.
To date mobile has been a category all about promise. There is the impending promise that carriers are seeking out ways to monetize their customer base further -- and with decreasing sales for new handsets, the only options they have are increased data services or advertising. While data services are certainly important, they will undoubtedly become cheaper in the coming years because no one (myself included) wants to spend $200 per month on their cell phone.
Advertising is certainly inevitable in the mobile environment, but it's a pickle to figure out how and where. Users don't like the intrusive nature of push ads displayed on their phones, plus they cost money to receive, which can be a nightmare of consumer backlash. These mobile social networking opportunities finally present something that can be used for marketers to tap into a customer's mindset.
The obvious opportunities are those where consumers can identify some of their favorite brands -- and their phones could alert them whenever they are in proximity to those brands. For example, are you a BMW fan? If so, the phone could alert you whenever you're near the BMW dealer with the new 6-series. Are you a Burger King guy? If you are near a BK, say within ½ a mile, your phone could ping you to let you know! Are you a mom with kids eight to 10 years old? Then your phone could ping you to let you know that there's a Chuck E Cheese just around the corner, and they have a special today!
The slightly more advanced opportunities would be for the phone to become a true "smartphone," where it learns the people you call, keeps track of these people, and applies this information to your GPS map. For example, if you regularly call your friend at 555-1234, then the phone may let you know that your friend is at Safeway or is around the corner from you. If you typically call the doctor because you're a hypochondriac, then maybe the phone will alert you the fact that Safeway is having a sale on vitamins. Of course, you would have to initiate these types of services, unless the carrier just decided these would become standard with your service, for a reduced monthly charge, of course.
For these ideas to truly become commonplace, the next generation of phones will still need to step up. The interface still needs to improve and the delivery speeds for data services will still need to accelerate. That will happen, certainly by next year, and possibly by June when the Apple iPhone finally comes out -- provided it's not nearly as buggy as some people are saying.

Customizing Cellphone Ads

Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com

The Ad-Free Cellphone May Soon Be Extinct

February 14, 2007

By ERIC SYLVERS

ADVERTISING on your cellphone?

Yes, and soon.

Already, ads are creeping onto cellphones around the globe. At this rate, experts say, it will not be long before the 2.2 billion mobile phone users around the world consider it natural to tune into a 15-second spot before watching a video, sending a message or listening to a downloaded song between phone conversations.

Or so they hope.

“This is the year that advertising breaks out worldwide,” said Laura Marriott, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association, based in Boulder, Colo., which represents more than 400 advertisers, phone makers, wireless operators and market research companies. “Previously, there were not enough of the right phones and fast networks to support good advertising.”

Ms. Marriott spoke yesterday in Barcelona, Spain, where 60,000 people are gathered this week for the 3GSM World Congress, the cellphone industry’s main event of the year. Several companies at the exposition are promising to meld advertising with the mobile phone in a way that respects people’s privacy while bringing in new revenue to offset sagging growth in voice services for phone carriers.

Yahoo, for instance, began displaying ads Sunday on sites accessible to subscribers with advanced cellphones in 19 countries. Mobile phone users with data as well as voice subscriptions would see the ads when going to Yahoo’s home Web page on their phones. They could then click on an ad to dial a company directly or to get more information and special offers.

The advertisers that Yahoo has signed up include Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Hilton, Nissan, Singapore Airlines and Intel, and the 19 countries include the United States, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and India.

By the time such advertising becomes a mass-market phenomenon, most people in countries with developed economies will have advanced phones that can browse the Internet and play video, according to Nick Lane, an analyst with Informa Telecoms and Media, based in London.

•

The very nature of the mobile phone gives operators information about their customers that Internet and television advertisers can only dream of having.

Carriers know not just where their clients live, but where they are at the moment the ad is seen, how much they spend on phone services, whom they call and when, their age and sex, what games and music they play on their phones — and how to bill them.

People in the industry say they know that the personalized nature of cellphones is a double-edged sword: it is what makes the medium appealing to advertisers, but many people consider the medium too personal to be invaded by outside interests.

Some executives warned that success was not guaranteed, especially because the industry lacks common technical standards that would make it easy for advertisers to sell to many operators at once.

“The mobile phone can reach everybody and it’s always on, but we need to rapidly define our industry standards to be able to benefit from this opportunity,” Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone, said in a speech yesterday in Barcelona. Vodafone is the largest mobile phone operator by revenue.

“If we don’t work together, our suppliers will see a fragmented medium and a fragmented user base, as opposed to a single, valuable medium,” Mr. Sarin said. “We need to seize the moment and work together to help ads move to mobile. It won’t happen well if Vodafone does it differently than Orange and T-Mobile.”

The United States members of the Mobile Marketing Association — which include Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and others — have agreed to guidelines that would limit advertising to those phone customers who “opt in,” or choose to receive the ads, usually in return for cheaper or free services. The organization is completing guidelines for the European market.

“Privacy is a big issue, and that has to be solved for mobile advertising to be successful,” Ms. Marriott said. “I don’t think people will opt in 24/7, but maybe they will opt in for certain times of day and for certain types of advertising.”

A recent report from Informa forecast that the market for mobile advertising will rise to $11.3 billion in 2011 from almost nothing just two years ago. It is too early to tell whether one type of advertising will be dominant in developed countries because the market is still in its nascent phase, though banner ads and short video spots are sure to be big, Mr. Lane said. Text-message ads will dominate in developing countries, he said.

•

Lowering the costs to consumers is especially appealing to the companies that produce media content for mobile phones.

“If you can get something for half-price or for free if there is a bit of advertising, and that can be done in a noninvasive manner, that’s compelling,” said Chadd Knowlton, general manager of the content access and protection division of Microsoft. “We’ll continue to see richer and better mobile advertising across all kinds of content.”

Patrick Parodi, chief marketing officer of Amobee Media Systems, which helps carriers bring advertising to their clients and showcased a new service at the Barcelona event, said reducing consumer media costs was an important outcome.

“Mobile is the last remaining medium where the user has to bear the entire cost of the content,” he said, “and that risks stunting the growth of many new and innovative mobile services that clients might be willing to access if the costs were lower.”

While the Mobile Marketing Association and other industry groups are laying down some ground rules, other basics are still being ironed out, including how best to deliver the ads. Analysts said to expect companies to introduce various styles of advertising, with possible methods including banners, text messages and multimedia messages, as well as video spots before, during or after a clip.

“The mobile phone is a pristine media,” Mr. Parodi said, “and we have to be sure not to ruin that.”

Mobile TV standards vye for acceptance

By Kate Mackenzie at the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona

Published: February 16 2006 12:56 | Last updated: February 16 2006 12:56

With promises abounding of sports events, reality TV and celebrity broadcasts, there was no shortage of exuberance around delivering television to mobile phones at this year’s 3GSM Congress in Barcelona.

Almost every large mobile network operator and handset maker at the trade show was demonstrating or talking about their mobile TV plans, and content producers were equally excited.

Strategy Analytics, a technology consultancy, has predicted mobile TV will be worth $3.5bn by 2009, and mobile TV trials carried out late last year in the UK by BT and O2 showed encouraging interest in the service.

The mobile telecoms industry reasons that “everyone likes TV”, while the television industry is also showing strong interest in mobile phones as it faces fracturing audiences for its traditional services.

However it’s far from certain how mobile TV would work, says Jessica Sandin, a senior consultant at Fathom Partners, which provides strategic advice on convergent media and technology. There is still little known about how customers will use the service, while commercial issues have yet to be determined. “No-one knows what the successful formula will be,” she said.

DVB-H, a mobile version of a widely-used digital television standard used in O2’s trial, is widely expected to become the dominant mobile TV technology, at least in Europe and parts of Asia. New services announced this week by BT and Virgin Mobile in the UK will be based on DAB, the digital radio technology.

Meanwhile in South Korea - which is seen as a pioneer in broadband and mobile phone services - another technology, terrestrial DMB or TDMB, is supported by big manufacturers such as Samsung and LG.

Qualcomm, the US telecoms equipment company which developed CDMA mobile phone standards, says its proprietary FLO technology is superior.

Chief executive Paul Jacobs told the FT that he believed there were good opportunities for FLO around the world.

“Certainly people in the DVB-H camp are trying to make it seem that DVB goes with GSM or CDMA, and Flo is more CMDA2000 [which is little used in Europe], but I don’t buy that.”

However he said Qualcomm’s media service operation, MediaFLO, which manages content distribution for network operators such as Verizon, was unlikely to be replicated in Europe.

“We’d be willing to be partners in it, but I don’t necessarily see us as having the same position we have in the US where we actually own the whole thing.”

One outsider with a fighting chance is IPWireless, which has raised more than $200m including $14m from US mobile operator Sprint. Founded six years ago as a mobile broadband developer, IPWireless’ technology, tdTV, is more aligned to telecoms standards than DVB-H, which hails from the broadcast industry.

IPWireless’ broadband products are already used by some big mobile operators, such as T-mobile in the Czech Republic and Orange on Wednesday announced a trial of the technology on its 3G network.

Jon Beizer, chief financial officer, said IPWireless received a sudden flurry of interest in tdTV six months ago which has led to talks with several operators. Echoing the comments many companies made at 3GSM, he said the operators wanted to move incredibly quickly to deploy mobile TV, speeding up the trial and review process. It’s moving so fast that Mr Beizer said he expects to know within six months how widely tdTV will be used.

The Mobile Marketing Maelstrom: Why the Confusion and Hype isn’t Dampening the Optimism

from Adotas by Susie Kang

Are you confused about Mobile? Who can blame you? The lingo alone is enough to make your head spin: on-deck, off-deck, short codes—but what does it all mean?

I’ve got a secret to share and it might surprise you: Mobile marketing is not as difficult as it sounds. Seriously, it isn’t that complicated and if you bear with me for a few minutes I will explain why.

I don’t have to tell you that mobile is a hot topic in the interactive advertising world these days. It seems like everywhere you turn, there’s talk about mobile marketing. But for all the hype, I was genuinely surprised that the mobile marketing sessions at ad:tech NY left me even more confused than I when I first went in. The single most important thing I learned during that conference was that there is a lot more dialogue that needs to be had before everyone is on the same page and fully understands all of the options of mobile marketing.

Maybe it is what grabs headlines, but most of what I hear about mobile marketing seems really daunting and scary. “You need to work with carriers, handset makers, watch the permissions and get a short code!” are all the things I heard in Mobile 101. Even to me as a mobile search provider, that seemed like a tall order to fulfill. I can’t imagine what a media buyer must think. Especially when most of them don’t have the time or resources to figure it all out.

To be fair, media planners and buyers need to be risk averse at times, and new advertising platforms are tough to pitch to clients who look to online for somewhat predictable and measurable results. When WhitePages.com conducted its own informal survey of media planners and buyers at ad:tech NY, we learned that mobile marketing is nearly at the bottom of our respondent’s list of marketing tactics to test in 2007, and that mobile marketing’s special place in the mix is yet to be defined: is it good for driving online sales? Offline store visits? Branding? Nobody really knows—yet.

However, what irked me more about the mobile marketing sessions at ad:tech was the failure to mention that there is a huge, relatively easy to execute opportunity to buy banner and text advertising on popular mobile sites. By this I mean WAP-enabled Websites that are operated by publishers like WhitePages.com, USA Today, and the New York Times. Because these sites are independent of carriers, or “off-deck” there is no worrying about permissions, carriers and handset makers, as we already have permission from the users. Executing a marketing campaign on a mobile site can be as simple and uncomplicated as executing a marketing campaign on a regular Website. At WhitePages.com we’ll even design and build WAP-enabled campaign landing pages and re-size our client’s creative to ensure they appear correctly on all devices and browsers. We want to make buying mobile as simple as possible, especially given the current landscape.

Here is something I bet you didn’t know: Research from Enpocket showed that a majority of mobile users between the ages of 16 and 44 find advertising on mobile Internet sites acceptable. A recent Forrester report stated that when mobile advertising is done right, which means among other things that it is relevant to the consumer, response rates are high, and consumer engagement is increased.

According to WhitePages.com’s internal study to learn about consumer’s mobile habits and perceptions, study participants told us that they use their mobile devices for three main purposes: Web searches, email and making phone calls. The typical lookup for someone using their mobile device to search the web are local business listings, like restaurant phone numbers and hours, maps and directions and news and sports headlines. Most people use their mobile devices for lookups several times a week some even do it several times a day. Given what I heard at ad:tech, you would think that the major carrier decks were the most popular sites for these activities, but you would be wrong. What you see users doing on the Web, is mirrored in mobile, with popular sites including Google, Yahoo! Mapquest and White and Yellow Pages sites.

So what does this mean? It means that there is a huge untapped mobile advertising market out there, just waiting for marketers to leverage. As mobile advertising gains more of a foothold and myths and misconceptions are put to rest, I hope marketers will reconsider and think of mobile as another solution for driving sales whether it is online or offline. I know that I can’t wait for the day that mobile becomes a standard part of any marketing campaign. Like the hundreds of other publishers out there, we are chomping at the bit and ready to execute. Just say the word.

One Billion Mobile Ads Served in Six Months

By Eric M. Zeman
January 29, 2007
NEWS@2 DIRECT

AdMob says that mobile Web users are drawn to mobile communities and downloading sites, where they have served 1 billion mobile Web advertisements in the last six months.

The United States and South Africa represented the top two countries in terms of mobile Web traffic, with 90 million and 66 million page views per month, respectively. India, the UK and Romania rounded out the top 5.

The top manufacturers’ devices being used to surf the mobile Web were, not surprisingly, Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and LG. What was surprising was the margin by which Nokia overshadowed Motorola. Three times as many users were surfing the Web on a Nokia device compared to a Motorola device.

The most interesting data to come from AdMob is the growth potential. “The encouraging data point for the mobile Web is not just the number of ads being served, but the pace at which things are growing,” explained Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of AdMob. “In our first six months, we only served about 30 million ads, and over the following six months, we served 1 billion more.”

“The mobile advertising industry really needs more transparency,” continued Hamoui, “as well as accurate and actionable data. For the first time, we really feel that we have sufficient scale to develop some insight on the usage of the mobile Web, and we’re determined to invest more time sharing this knowledge to help spur the growth of the industry as a whole.”

SMS Spam on the Rise

SophosLabs has warned of the rising nuisance of spam sent to mobile phones as two people from Florida have been charged with flooding cell phones with spam messages advertising time shares. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a suit against Neela Pundit and Charles Rossop for sending 5 million unsolicited text messages to cell phone owners across the country.

More than 200 consumers complained in Illinois alone after receiving the advertisements in October and November 2006 which read "We have someone interested in buying or renting your Time Share" and encouraged recipients to visit two internet websites.

"Cell phone spam isn't just a nuisance, it can potentially hit you in the pocket too. Often mobile spam messages may tell you just to call back a certain number, only for the recipient to find they are unwittingly making a premium rate call," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Although it's a long way to go before SMS text spam is anything like as big a problem as regular email spam, we are hearing more reports of cell phone users being targeted. Users should report SMS abuse to their phone network providers and think carefully before acting upon unsolicited text messages."

Mobilizing Social Networking Sites

JANUARY 26, 2007
'Gotta run, but we can stay connected.'
US and UK mobile phone users are starting to put their phones to work creating and uploading content to a variety of Web sites, and social networking sites are leading the way.

It may be far from a mainstream activity as yet, but according to Telephia, 4% of UK mobile users have already uploaded content created on their mobile phones to social networking sites, video- and picture-sharing sites, blogs and personal Web pages.

In fact, users are even finding ways to send content to sites that do not yet offer facilities to upload directly from mobiles, which suggests a strong latent demand for mobile to be integrated into the social networking world.

"Social networking sites have taken the Web by storm. Eighty-five percent of UK consumers are using text messaging to stay connected to their peers and more than 80 percent of new phones sold are camera phones," said Reza Chady of Telephia.

More to the point, Mr. Chady added, "Social networking in the UK will spread from the PC to the street in 2007."

Telephia's research in the UK suggests that MySpace is the site receiving content from the largest number of mobile consumers, with 21% of mobile uploaders saying that they have sent content there.

In the US, where a mobile version of MySpace is available on certain carriers, 6% of mobile users are uploading content to sites from their phones. But social networking sites dominate, with 32% of mobile uploaders putting content onto MySpace.

In both the US and UK, uploading content from the phone is most popular with younger consumers, with 15-to-24-year-olds leading the way.

For more information on developments in social networking, read eMarketer's Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending Update report.

BANNER YEAR Companies Vie For Ad Dollars On Mobile Web

As More Surf Internet On Phones, Start-Ups Race to Broker Deals

By AMOL SHARMA
January 17, 2007; Page A1

A company called AdMob Inc. opened for business in January 2006 as a middleman for ads displayed on mobile-phone screens. A year later, it has distributed ads nearly a billion times, attracted big-name venture-capital funding and enlisted talent from the likes of Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.'s YouTube.

It's the next Internet gold rush: With two billion cellphones around the world, upstarts and technology giants alike are scrambling to find ways of making money from cellphone ads. "Everybody's just trying to dip their toes in the water and figure out what's going to work," says AdMob's 29-year-old boss, Omar Hamoui.

• The Situation: The advertising market for the mobile Web is heating up as more people surf the Internet on their cellphones.

• The Players: Start-ups are acting as middlemen between Web sites and advertisers. Google, Yahoo and cellphone carriers also see opportunity.

• What's Next: If TV on phones takes off, companies will try to put ads in it.

Viewing Web sites on cellphones isn't a mass pastime in the U.S. quite yet. Screens are tiny, download speeds are often slow and fees can pile up. Yet a sliver of people -- about 15% of U.S. cellphone users, according to research firm M:Metrics Inc. -- do surf online via their phones, checking out entertainment, news and other sites. The experience is similar to surfing the Internet via a personal computer, except the number of sites that are fashioned for cellphone screens is much smaller. The owners of these sites have a supply of viewers, and there is plentiful demand among advertisers to reach young, tech-savvy people.

AdMob and another upstart, Third Screen Media, act as middlemen in the business. Advertisers need these companies' help in harnessing technology to deliver an ad on a phone without glitches. Site owners often prefer to turn their supply of ad space over to middlemen rather than trying to beat the bushes for potential advertisers.

Along with start-ups, a host of more established players are trying to profit from cellphone ads. Google is testing a service that offers ads alongside search results on a cellphone screen, a counterpart to its flagship business of selling ads linked to regular Internet searches.

The big cellphone carriers -- among them Sprint Nextel Corp., AT&T Inc. and the U.K.'s Vodafone Group PLC -- all have ad initiatives that threaten the rise of the smaller fry. Cellphone carriers have a lot of information about their customers -- such as their location, buying habits and mobile Web-surfing patterns -- that might be useful in selling targeted advertising. However, technology and privacy issues have prevented that information from being used so far.

Advertising on cellphones is sprouting thanks to advances in phone technology. Early models were designed solely for calling, not for downloading data. Today's phones, with their color screens and data connections, have come to resemble small portable computers -- clearing the way for Web sites and Web advertising that parallel the PC experience.

Still, some in the business remain cautious about whether consumers who think of their cellphones as private possessions will tolerate ads. "It's terrific that you can target people in their environment, close and personal," says Steve Calder, executive media director at Mediahub, a media-services unit of Interpublic Group of Cos.' Mullen agency. "How do you do so in a way that doesn't feel like it's an unwanted intrusion?"

In 2006, mobile ad spending was an estimated $871 million world-wide, according to data from research firm Informa Telecoms and Media. Most of the money went into text messages, the mobile equivalent of sending people ads by email. Spending on Internet advertising was about $24 billion world-wide in 2006, according to ZenithOptimedia, a unit of Publicis Group SA.

A Latecomer

The U.S. is a relative latecomer to mobile-phone advertising. Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. has been posting small banner ads on mobile Web sites since 2000. It says it displayed 1.5 billion ads to subscribers last year.

Upstarts like AdMob think they can beat the bigger companies by specializing in services tailored to little screens. Mr. Hamoui's idea for AdMob grew out of his frustrations in an earlier venture, called Fotochatter, a service that allowed customers to share photos using cellphones. Mr. Hamoui tried advertising linked to Google search results, but he says it cost $30 in ads to attract a single customer.

Then, through a friend, he was able to place ads on the mobile Web page of a gaming company. That was much more successful: Mr. Hamoui reached people interested in his product and converted more of those who clicked on his ad into users. The cost to acquire a customer was just 10 cents. He quickly saw a business opportunity. "You had companies out there willing to pay to reach users on the mobile Web and companies out there with mobile Web traffic," he recalls, "but nobody connecting them."

Putting Fotochatter aside, he started AdMob in his Philadelphia apartment when he was still a business student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He quickly caught the attention of Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that was an early backer of Google and Yahoo. Sequoia agreed to invest in Mr. Hamoui's start-up, which is now based in San Mateo, Calif. A person familiar with the investment says it was about $4 million.

"He had struggled as a mobile entrepreneur," says Jim Goetz, a Sequoia partner, who approached AdMob and now sits on the start-up's board. "We always look for that when we're making investments: Did they design a system to solve their prior pain?"

Last fall, Warner Music Group's Atlantic Records called on AdMob when it started selling cellphone ringtones to go along with an album by hip-hop artist Sean "Diddy" Combs. AdMob served up an ad reading "Get Your Diddy Ringtones Now" 715,000 times on cellphone screens over a three-hour period. More than 20,000 people around the world clicked on the link, taking them to Atlantic's mobile Web site. The record company was so happy with the sales the campaign generated that it is planning new campaigns through AdMob.

Under AdMob's system, as with Google's on the Internet, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on the link. Advertisers go to AdMob's Web site, fill out a form, and make a bid for a click in one of several categories, such as news, entertainment or communities. The bids for a click generally range from five cents to a dollar.

AdMob has delivered ads for other big brands, such as eBay Inc., Adidas AG and Nokia Corp. The former head of ad sales at YouTube, the video-sharing site bought by Google last year, now works for AdMob.

Despite the big-name customers, Mr. Hamoui says the company's bread-and-butter is serving start-ups that don't have six-figure marketing budgets. The average cost of an AdMob campaign is $5,000 to $10,000. AdMob is able to target ads to users in a specific country, a feature that has attracted some advertisers. More than a third of the ad traffic goes to cellphones in developing countries such as India.

One small company that is using AdMob's low-cost ads is Orb Networks Inc. Orb's software is for people who have video or audio clips on their computer and want to enjoy those clips on their cellphone. When installed on a computer, the Orb software allows users to stream the clips over the Internet and onto their cellphones.

In the past, Orb advertised its software through Google but got little response. Within weeks of starting the campaign via AdMob, thousands of consumers visited Orb's Web site and downloaded its software for their PCs. "For those of us trying to reach the mobile consumer, this is the best way," says Ian McCarthy, Orb's vice president of product marketing.

Intense Competition

AdMob faces intense competition, in particular from East Coast rival Third Screen Media in Boston. Third Screen's founder, Tom Burgess, previously was president of CollegeLink.com Inc., an Internet portal with college information that was acquired by Monster Worldwide Inc.

Unlike AdMob, Third Screen seeks deals mainly with big advertisers and well-trafficked mobile Web sites such as Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN. In a typical recent case, Third Screen served banner ads for Ford Motor Co. and Bank of America on the mobile Web site of the Weather Channel. Others that have advertised through Third Screen include companies in consumer goods, hotels and soft drinks.

Mr. Burgess says the typical ad campaign arranged by his company now costs about $200,000, up from $35,000 in 2005. He predicts some mobile advertisers may spend as much as $1 million on a campaign this year. Mr. Burgess says Third Screen displays 350 million ads every month on the phones of more than 10 million unique cellphone users. Microsoft Corp. considered acquiring Third Screen last year, according to a person familiar with the situation, but the talks fell apart. Microsoft declined to comment.

Piece of the Market

Several other start-ups are trying to grab a piece of the market. Greystripe Inc. helps advertisers embed ads in downloadable cellphone applications such as games. Rhythm NewMedia Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., has developed technology to insert short video spots before mobile TV segments. The company is planning to cooperate with several wireless carriers in the U.S. and Europe and has attracted $27 million in venture funding.

Mr. Hamoui is tweaking his technology to attract higher-end advertisers that prefer something fancier than a mere text link. Future versions of AdMob software will be able to serve banner ads and video ads, he says.

Along with the start-ups are established Internet players, the companies that themselves were newcomers to the ad business just a few years ago. DoubleClick Inc., which provides software to display Internet ads such as the ubiquitous banners on Web sites, is gearing up to enter the mobile market, a person familiar with the company's plans said.

Google, which has about 25% of the $16 billion U.S. online ad market according to research firm eMarketer, is also working on adapting its technology to cellphones. Google offers a search engine tailored to cellphone users and has begun displaying ads linked to these cellphone searches. The phrase "ringtones," for example, brings up sponsored links to companies selling ringtones for cellphones. Some of the Google ads give users the option of clicking a link to call the advertiser.

Then there are the large telecom operators such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone. These carriers typically maintain a limited zone of sites in categories such as sports and finance that users can easily reach.

'Walled Garden' Model

One uncertainty about the mobile Web is whether this "walled garden" model will last. On the regular Internet, service providers such as America Online originally tried to keep users within a similar zone of approved content, but that system didn't endure. If walled gardens survive on cellphones, that would make it easier for the telecom giants to control the flow of mobile ads and profit from them. Sprint demands a substantial share of ad revenue on mobile Web sites that consumers access through its portal, regardless of who delivers the ads, people familiar with the matter say.

Sprint began putting banner ads on some partner sites last fall with the help of a start-up, Enpocket. The carrier has a separate arrangement with Internet ad broker Ingenio for a service that lets businesses bid to be listed when users tap a word like "pizza" into a Sprint search application. The model is "pay per call": Advertisers pay only if a consumer clicks on the link to call them. Alltel Corp., the fifth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, recently struck a similar search advertising deal with start-up JumpTap Inc.

AT&T hasn't said whom it will team up with, but the company is already ramping up staff to help sell ads on cellphones, says Scott Helbing, executive vice president of entertainment services. In Europe, Vodafone is tapping into Yahoo's sizable sales force for a service expected to start this spring that will likely show ads in formats including banners and short video spots. Vodafone has said it intends to reduce prices on ad-supported services such as mobile TV and games.

Mr. Hamoui doubts the big carriers will be interested in playing middleman for hundreds of small mobile Web sites and advertisers. He also thinks advertisers may prefer to deal with a single broker for a cellphone ad campaign rather than striking deals with individual carriers across the globe.

With the role of carriers uncertain, Mr. Hamoui is hedging his bets. AdMob plans to announce shortly that it is hiring Niren Hiro, an executive from Yahoo's mobile division, as a vice president. One of Mr. Hiro's jobs will be to build AdMob's ties with carriers.