• by Ross Fadner , October 29, 2009

If the publisher-ad network relationship in mobile is a marriage, it’s more that of Al and Peg Bundy than the cozy depiction of marriage in the typical 1960s sitcom, says Isobar’s Kevin Ryan. In other words, it’s not happiness ever after.

Indeed, publishers and mobile ad network operators failed to get along at the OMMA Mobile conference in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Jeff Litvak from the Associated Press indicated that publishers’ early reliance on mobile ad nets has more to do with sales teams that are still unequipped to sell mobile content at a premium, than it does with ad nets offering value (of course, agencies might disagree). Litvak noted that if premium publishers worked together to bring sports, weather, and news together, “we could trump all of you guys up here on stage.”

If mobile ad nets are so bad for publishers, depressing CPMs in a market where premium inventory never got a chance to establish itself as such, then why does everyone want one? JumpTap CMO Paran Johar noted that agencies as well as publishers want to build their own mobile ad networks these days. “What is going to be your value proposition,” he asked?

Agencies and publishers don’t have the resources or the expertise to succeed in the ad network space, argued Tony Nethercutt, VP of Sales for AdMob, a mobile network. They don’t know how to take advantage of the space, nor do they know about the many pitfalls, he said.