• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 29, 2008

Guidelines for mobile video and TV that will be added to the Mobile Marketing Association's other recently released advertising guidelines are expected to be finished by October.

With guidelines in place, consumers can expect to see more ads on mobile phones. Worldwide spending on mobile advertising reached nearly $2.7 billion last year and should hit $4.6 billion in 2008--rising to $19.1 billion by 2012, according to eMarketer. The research firm estimates messaging will account for more than $14 billion of the total $19 billion spent on mobile campaigns by 2012.

Revisions for display and messaging--which recommend aspect ratios and banner dimensions, maximum file sizes and file formats among other specs--took six months to revise and refine. The MMA hopes to update all guidelines every six months.

The downloadable guidelines also include graphic file formats for advertising in video games. The MMA recommends that where the consumer is disrupted by a click-through, ads for applications and games should display before the launch or exit of the application, be queued until the end of the application experience, or avoided altogether.

The U.S. remains the largest market for mobile advertising, although it lags both Europe and Asia in terms of cell phone sales and use. EMarketer estimates the total U.S. market for mobile advertising will reach $6.5 billion by 2012, up from nearly $1.7 billion this year.

The 70-member MMA committee comprising publishers, mobile content providers and agencies is chaired by Madhouse in Asia, Nokia and Vodafone in Europe, and Verizon Wireless and Yahoo in the U.S.

The MMA has a global mobile advertising committee with five working groups: mobile Web, downloadable, text, MMS and video and television. The group also released a white paper that explains the options and how to buy mobile advertising in order to help companies understand the metrics and available resources.