• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 26, 2011

Even Neufeld of mobile research firm Ground Truth quickly ran down what he called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of mobile marketing at OMMA Global. Among the key points he made was that the lines between the PC and mobile are eroding as smartphones spread and more people go on the mobile Web.

But as the use of HTML5 expands for creating mobile sites, use of apps will be geared more toward certain uses including games, social media and maps. And even though mobile phones are ubiquitous, it will still be some time before having the latest smartphone becomes mainstream. People will continue to have different mobile experiences depending on where they are in the adoption curve.

Still, Ground Truth predicts 263 million Americans will own cellphones in two years, 142m will own smartphones, 20% will own a tablet. For mobile advertising and commerce to take off, Neufeld emphasized that offers and content have to improve. He also said the lack of standard metrics in mobile, continues to hold back advertising in the medium.

Consider, 51% of companies surveyed don't have an executable mobile strategy, 55% spent less than $55,000 on mobile ad initiatives last year, and 52% struggle to get budget. Neufeld described mobile marketing as being at the "crawling to standing" stage, with a long way to go before "flying."