I’ll be at Ad:Tech in New York on November 6 and 7 at AdHoc’s booth. Come by and chat if you’re around. Or if you’d like to meet outside of the conference somewhere, that’s great too.

Here’s a nice little synopsis of mobile advertising press over the past couple months or so.

WebProNews on Mobile Users Open To Ads, Not To Land Lines:

Mobile phone users are showing an increased interest in a give-and-take advertising system. According to Harris Interactive, 26 percent of mobile phone subscribers say they’d swap attention for free stuff. And though it seems like an insignificant number on the surface, 7 percent demonstrated a willingness to receive relevant promotional text messages.

Content Ads Guide on Google’s Text-Only Mobile Search Ads:

Google is making its Adwords ad program available for mobile phones. The ads are relevant and unobtrusive text ads as normal Google Ads, and customers will see them when searching Google with the mobile phone.

Chetan Sharma on What Will Make Mobile Advertising Tick?:

It is quite clear from the industry trends that mobile industry (especially in the US) is moving from an emerging state to a more interactive and immersive application and services environment. By 2011, advertising industry will be close to $600B. Can mobile start to increase its revenue share from its current levels of less than 0.2% to 2-5% by then? Since this medium can provide context, immediacy, and personalization, the answer is yes. However, there are technical, business, and legal hurdles
to be crossed before the industry becomes a thriving institution.

Thierry Pepin on Mobile Ad Trend Grows:

Publishers are beginning to realize consumer burnout could hamper future growth of subscription-based content models, according to Forrester’s Golvin. “There are only so many $2.99 and $5.99 subscriptions you can sell the poor consumer before they say, ‘I’ve had enough,’” he said.

RadioCaffeine on Make Mobile Meaningful:

Consumers are more accepting of ads on their cell phone — if they are relevant — says a new report from mobile marketing company Enpocket. In the study, some 78% of consumers said they would be happy to receive mobile advertising that is tailored to their interests. Of those, 64% would be willing to provide personal details if that data were analyzed to improve relevance of the ads. In addition, 58% of respondents would prefer banner ads displayed on mobile Internet pages to mobile marketing text
messages.

eGames on Yahoo and Mobile Advertising:

A “select group of advertisers” are participating in the test (http://mobile.yahoo.com/searchmarketing/) of sponsored listings on mobile web search results, according to (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061004-090744) the Search Engine Watch blog. The number of advertisers will increase as the program is rolled out. Consumers who click on the sponsored links will be taken to the advertisers’ mobile website or a landing page to get more information about the advertisers’ offerings and will be
able to call the advertiser.

dotMobi on Note to Advertisers: Think Mobile:

Note to the savvy advertiser… The new frontier where competitive advantage can be gained is the mobile Internet.

TopWebNews on Mobile Advergaming: “Advertising to Go”:

Advergaming promotes products and services throughout a game’s progress. Typically, downloading a game to a cell phone runs $2 to $8. But if a company agrees to pay for most or all of the game endorsement messages and download cost, the audience potential for promotion of that company’s product/service becomes gigantic. That means the customer base created for those same products or services can grow exponentially. That’s BIG money for a relatively small investment.

Always on Real-Time Access on Mobile Advertising Bubble:

There will be a lot of companies that will be funded in this space as it is new and hot. Lot is unknown, people are just trying to figure things out.

According to Forbes, Verizon has decided to officially support Flash Lite for BREW.

initially will be compatible with four high-end phone models. The handset’s software will be upgraded over-the-air with an automatic download when a customer accesses Flash-enabled content.

I don’t think this means, however, that you can just pull a FlashLite SWF up on the phone and BREW will be used to play it. Qualcomm is notorious for requiring people to be authenticated BREW developers before they even have a chance of deploying an app. But if this process is eventually streamlined or lightened, we could see a ton of content pop up very quickly.

Verizon said in a statement it expects to benefit from the large community of software developers already creating Flash-based media for the Internet: “Flash Lite for BREW utilizes the key features and benefits of the Flash authoring tool and the BREW platform, providing developers with a clear path to market for content distribution.”

That means media developed for Web consumption can more easily be adapted for cell phone delivery. Still, a Verizon spokesman said media companies are looking to create more original material specifically for mobile devices and that the new Flash application will make that process easier.

{PLUG} Anyone looking to develop Flash Lite apps for Verizon, remember to check out AdHoc’s mobile advertising offering. It’s the easiest way to make monetize those applications. Check out some posts about it here and here.

According to Mobility Today, sprint has finally started deploying their Rev A network, starting in San Diego.

Sprint Power Vision users in these markets should experience significantly faster average upload speeds of 300-400 kbps (compared with 50-70 kbps of current EV-DO networks). Average download speeds should also increase to 450–800 kbps from 400-700 kbps. By 3Q 2007, Sprint’s Power Vision network is expected to be completely upgraded to the faster EV-DO Revision A.

The cities slated to get the upgrade are:

1. Baltimore

2. Boston

3. Buffalo, N.Y.

4. Denver

5. Detroit

6. Hartford, Conn.

7. Kansas City, Mo

8. Las Vegas

9. Los Angeles

10. Milwaukee

11. Newark/Trenton, N.J.

12. New York City

13. Philadelphia

14. Pittsburgh

15. Providence, R.I.

16. Sacramento, Calif.

17. Salt Lake City

18. San Francisco

19. Seattle

20. Washington, D.C.

Very cool news. Too bad I have Verizon.

JSR 190 has entered public review.  Its goal is to provide a way for applications to communicate statistics about events in a unified way - basically a way to collect usage statistics and behavior patterns.

The first thought off the top of my head was “we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.”  Given the sad state of downloadable J2ME apps in the US, do we really need the opportunity to collect this type of data right now?  If we’re able to track user behavior through an application, what will that enable the average publisher to do better at this stage of mobile software in the US?

Then I came up with a few examples that seemed interesting.  What if you send out an app with pre-loaded content?  Let’s say a bartending app.  What mixed-drinks are my users looking at the most?  What if I put a rating system in and report these statistics back using JSR 190?  What times of day do my users look at the app the most?  Knowing this will allow me to offer downloadable content or new versions that target my users correctly.

However, if the same bartending app is pulling data from a server to populate its database, this JSR doesn’t do much for me.  I know what content is being pulled and when, so I can collect the same data serverside.

Whether I’m missing some valid use cases of this JSR or not, it does have some interest to me when I put my mobile advertising hat on.  AdHoc’s API is designed to allow applications to send as much knowledge about the user as content as they see fit or are able to, and match ads based on that.  If publishers are able to collect more data and can send us more detailed targeting information at runtime, the user will be presented with that much more relevant
ads.  So good news on that front.

There is, however, the application of this JSR to micropayments based on usage:

Currently, there is no standard J2ME API for application developers to track and communicate application events (e.g. starting an application, downloading a new level of game etc.) to a centralized server. Developers either have to incorporate proprietary APIs from different provisioning platform vendors, or the provisioning vendors have to instrument the applications in their own proprietary ways so that these application events can be posted, tracked and therefore accurately billed for.

Billed for.  Yikes.  I just had a horrifying flash of a pay-per-execution model.  This JSR gives publishers the ability to nickle-and-dime the user as they use different features of the software, or each time they run it at all.  I’m not a fan - so I’ll just think happy thoughts and assume this won’t come to light.

Here’s a little 3G roundup for you.

Cingular announced that they have finished their AT&T GSM network integration and can focus on network expansion now.

The 3G service, which offers mobile wireless broadband connections averaging 400-700 kilobits per second (Kbps), is available in 105 markets (populations of 100 thousand or more) in and around 44 major metropolitan cities.

44 major metro areas.  Meh.  It’s still not a true contender.  But soon the race will be on with T-Mobile. 

T-Mobile is joining the 3G bandwagon now that they won some spectrum by deploying a UMTS netowork.  Keep in mind the difference between UMTS and HSDPA.  Although UMTS is a term used to describe the range of 3G network types in Europe, it is also a specific lower-speed 3G technology.  Think of it as EDGE++ or HSDPA–.  It runs at about 100Kbps upstream and 400 Kbps max downstream.  HSDPA (Cingular’s network) runs at about the speed of EvDO rev 0 (not rev A); about 400 up and 700 down. 

But the cool thing about T-Mobile’s move is that they are looking to use multi-band chipsets that work on 3G networks worldwide - a step closer to worldwide 3G roaming.

Some questions still remain… Will using UMTS instead of HSDPA allow T-Mobile to deploy faster?  How will they price the service?

Update: GigaOM reports that T-Mobile is claiming that their networks will be HSDPA ready - whatever that means. It’s also being reported that the frequencies T-Mobile will be using are not completely compatible with European 3G frequencies. So if this roaming thing will come to be, it seems like it will be US customers roaming to Europe, if the chipsets deployed take these frequencies into account, and not the other way around.

Verizon, menanwhile, is trying to undermine their own current 3G dominance by terminating users who use their “unlimited” plan more than the arbitrary amount they set. 

Then, a month ago, David, a computer consultant who used the service to assist his database clients, was kicked off. When he called Verizon Wireless, he was transferred to the security department, which told him his account had been “permanently terminated” because he had used more than 166 megabytes per day…

…After several calls to Verizon Wireless, David learned what others, including other consumer bloggers found out through personal experience: The “unlimited” service is limited to 5 gigabytes per month or 166 megabytes per day.

Verizon is still an adolescent learning how to come into its own as an ISP.  It’s doing its best to reject what it is to eventually become, but we all know it’s inevitable.  I haven’t seen any complaints from Sprint along these lines, so if you want to compare EvDO coverage between the two and make the switch, EVDOinfo is a great resource.

Let’s follow all of this drama with a Sprint commercial chaser - Sprint EvDO smacking the heck out of Cingular EDGE.  They don’t show that the Cingular HSDPA cowboy is still riding his horse into town.