Some of the biggest mobile industry players gathered for the "Enter the Titans" morning panel including Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Nokia are describing mobile advertising as being still emerging or at a transitional phase as Internet advertising expands to cellphones.

Asked what the big difference between Yahoo's mobile offering is an those of the other major mobile platform developers, Director of Sales-Mobile Paul Cushman said it was the portal's mobile scale.

What kind of prerequisite should a mobile media guru at a major media shop have? Well, if it’s Carat’s Gene Keenan, it doesn’t hurt to be a Deadhead. Or better yet, have a connection to the Dead’s stomach. At least that’s what Keenan’s boss David Verklin noted during his conversation with iO’s Bob Desena. To illustrate the credentials of Carat’s mobile guru, Verklin turned to the audience and asked them if they knew what Keenan did before joining Carat? “He was the chef for the Greatful Dead,” Verklin said.

Asked about privacy issues related to mobile ad targeting, Verklin acknowledged it is an issue. Survey based targeting methods are less controversial so the industry can start with a focus on that way to reach the right consumers at the right time via cellphone. But he said behavioral targeting, based on cookie-based tracking, is really way to get effective tracking.

Verklin: "Mobile's going to crack wide open. I think the crackle of change has sounded." But while the U.S. has pioneered the Internet, you really have to look outside the U.S. for clues as to where mobile marketing is going. Of course, what he means by "cracked wide open" isn't really clear. Ad dollars haven't caught up to the global reach cellphones potentially offer markets. But Verklin isn't necessarily one to turn to for a sober assessment of a growing new ad market.

Verklin sees mobile as a good fit with increasingly integrated campaigns. "Look down at your feet in the shower and you see a picture of the the future of media. It's a mosaic," he said. "Advertising to the interested. That's what it's all about...That's why I think mobile will fit into so many marketing plans." Right now, Verklin views the lack of widespread 3G networks as the biggest barrier to mobile advertising in the U.S. He's big on the cellphone as a mobile wallet and for local search.

Just when we got used to “media being the new creative, along comes David Verklin to tell us that "data is the new creative." That's significant, because, Verklin is the same guy who championed media creativity.

Here it is. The long awaited conversation between a major media buyer (Aegis America’s David Verklin) and a major mobile platform developer (iO’s Bob Desena) on the future of a rapidly emerging digital medium. And what did they talk about first? A book. No, not an iBook, the printed media kind. Specifically, David Verklin’s book, “Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here." But that’s okay, because the book is really about the future of media, and the question posed by Desena, was his focus on mobile media. Verklin noted that …

In the morning keynote, Jeremy Wright, ad business global director of brand solutions for Nokia, talked about why mobile advertising isn't bigger than it is given some of strengths including strong response rates and its ubiquity. Among the reasons: a fragmented market, lack of measurable ROI and the need to make it easier for consumers to connect after clicking through an ad to a mobile landing page. "It's difficult when you have so many small suppliers, which do you use, who do you trust, without it being too complicated," said Wright.

To illustrate the rapid evolution of cell phone technology that is driving the adoption of the consumer marketplace, Evan Neufeld, vice president-consulting and senior analyst, M:Metrics flashed two then-and-now images to illustrate his point. The first was a picture of Gordon Gecko, the greedy antagonist portrayed by actor Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” Gecko was holding a then state-of-the-art cell phone (he was a billion dollar corporate raider, after all) that was about the size of a box of Fig Newtons. That was juxtaposed alongside an image of Steve Jobs holding his nifty iPhone. Aside …