• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 8, 2009

When a mobile phone that spends 18 hours in someone's pocket or purse makes a noise, they stop what they're doing and service the device. "That's a marketer's dream," Michael Wehrs, president and chief executive officer for the Mobile Marketing Association, tells Online Media Daily.

People develop a personal attachment to the device, so they tend to trust it. Large companies, such as BMW, Lufthansa, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, have recognized the benefits of mobile advertising. It's just that the 20% that advertise on mobile spend 80% of funds moving to mobile, and they are not talking about it, Wehrs says. Citing the worldwide manager for Coca-Cola, he says: "Mobile is a line item on our media budget for 2010."

Most of the brands participating in mobile marketing add a short code that consumers test to the brand to influence interaction. And while parents often complain that kids send too many text messages, Wehrs says people in the Philippines hold the No. 1 spot. In fact, the average text-messaging Filipino sends about 200 per day.

In the Philippines, the conversation may include three people, but only two are face to face. The third joins the conversation by interacting through text messaging. It's not just teenagers and young people thumbing it, but adults, too. Wehrs says it's a "weird place" to try and conduct business because in the United States it's not socially acceptable to text someone while talking, but Filipinos have different rules.

Similar to real-time conversations that occur across numerous media simultaneously, the most significant trend has become integrating mobile marketing campaigns. Yes, Wehrs leads the MMA trade group, but during this week's meeting with Online Media Daily at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment and International 2009 in San Diego, Calif., he came armed and confident with lots of stats.

For starters, companies that integrate mobile into the media buy can experience a 24% click-through rate on a phone versus .2% on a PC. The MMA wanted to know how much companies were spending on mobile campaigns, so it conducted an informal survey with mobile advertising companies, such as AdMob, HipCricket, Hyperfactory and Millenium Media. Last year, not one company spent more than $200,000 to advertise on mobile. In March 2009, the MMA recognized Land Rover and Jaguar as the first multimillion-dollar mobile ad campaign, but there have been many more since.

The growth in revenue from mobile ads has been between two and three times as much. "When I asked the mobile marketing companies to forecast what their clients will spend, the company projects between two and four times more this coming year, compared with last," he says.

Search engines, such as Google -- which this week made Search Options available on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS devices -- are fueling mobile advertising because consumers can segment the mobile search results.

Ads, paid search, video and short codes are not the only media spurring growth in mobile marketing. Short range near field communication (NFC) and two-dimensional (2D) barcodes have begun to alter marketing strategies. A brand manager using 2D barcodes no longer has to create a marketing promotion prior to completing the packaging. She can alter the program after the product is on the shelf.

Wehrs says with confidence that 2D barcodes will replace traditional lined barcodes that have been around for years.

Evidently, Wal-Mart Stores has been conducting trials with 2D technology, similar to radio frequency identification (RFID) the industry experienced during the early 2000s.

The challenge is finding a barcode that brands can use to market products, as well as track inventory through the supply chain. GS1 Global, an organization that has been spearheading efforts for years to gain more information from codes when tracking products through the supply chain, has been rallying for one barcode on packages rather than many.

When the conversation turned to personal privacy, Wehrs says mobile introduces complexities that need careful consideration. For starters, the phone number ties the personally identifiable information (PII) to the person who owns the device. The predictive algorithms are getting better, and the desire for people to get more relevant results continues to grow.

Although hypothetical, the risk comes in when companies start talking about aggregation of information from multiple services. Wehrs says the industry should educate the general public on the privacy implications of subscribing to multiple services, such as connecting through other services like Bank of America through social networks like Facebook. "The layperson will never understand that introduces a huge security risk," he says.