• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 14, 2012

Where’s the money? That’s Phonevalley CEO Alexandre Mars’ beef with spending on the media side, where mobile budgets are often still tiny--$25,000 campaigns--compared to digital and traditional channels. If mobile is truly to be at the core of marketing activities as Digitas CEO Colin Kinsella noted in his keynote address at OMMA Mobile, then spending first off has to increase. On a panel looking at why mobile is getting more love on within agencies and brands, Mars also acknowledged agencies have to do a better job selling mobile to clients as as a key part of the marketing mix.

He most aren’t dedicating sufficient time and energy to building campaings for the mobile ecosystem. “Most are not doing the work correctly,” said Mars. Chiming in, Brian Stoller, leader, digital strategy, Mindshare North America, pointed out that the firm ends up robbing digital budgets to fund mobile efforts. He also noted Mindshare doesn’t have enough people with expertise in both online and mobile to help coordinate campaigns across the two platforms. Stoller suggested brands could earmark just a small part of TV spending to mobile, "just 1 GRP" worth to boost their presence in the medium.