2010: The Year of the Mobile Marketer

You've heard it here first: 2010 will be the year that *true* mobile marketing takes off...

The iPhone is the most popular consumer electonics hardware in history (Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley recently produced the evidence at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco), and has set off a competitive wave that is bringing the best of the rich media, high-speed World Wide Web (and even more with unique mobile apps, etc.) to peoples' handhelds with the introductions of Droid, Palm Pre and other cool new devices that assuredly are on the way.

These are making marketing to consumers' handhelds much more interesting, attractive and downright feasible. SMS can best be described as "short," "plain," and even worse -- expensive for both brands and customers who are charged to receive these messages. Now that brands will have more sophisticated mobile options that also cost their customers, for all intents and purposes, absolutely nothing, expect a huge new wave of investment and interest in all forms of mobile marketing from the largest Fortune 500 marketers all the way down to the smallest online shops.

Google's announcement earlier this week of its intent to acquire the AdMob mobile advertising platform for $750 million is just the tip of the iceberg. In the year ahead, expect to see, among other fascinating developments:

* Major growth of ad networks optimized for mobile with geo-targeting and other bells and whistles

* Revival of email as "The Killer App" -- now with the ability to engage consumers anywhere at anytime, not just while they're at their desks (and replacing those costly and boring SMS campaigns).

* Explosion of digital video consumption on handhelds (and corresponding opportunities for marketers to buy valuable pre-roll, interstitial and post-roll video advertisements). 2009 saw huge growth in online video consumption on the PC; but with the rapid rise of high-speed access on handhelds, expect the number to grow exponentially in the year ahead.

Pivotal Veracity has assembled several *mind-blowing* studies, stats and facts in recent blog posts that underscore that NOW is the time for smart marketers to begin attacking their mobile marketing strategies in a big way. Check them out:

Mobile Email Marketing: Stats for Thought

Mobile Email Marketing: More Stats for Thought

~ Jordan Cohen, sr. director of marketing and PR, Pivotal Veracity