One questioner from the audience during the Mobilizing the Agency panel wondered if one of the panelists, James McNamara of Wasabi, was saying advertising doesn't work on mobile devices.

Angela Steele of global Account Director, Starcom Worldwide, said methodology on advertising is flawed in favor of advertising.

Angela Steele, global account director, starcome worldwide, says there is so far an uptick in mobile spend this year. "It has come through educating client teams. It doesnt happen over night. we insure that mobile is included early on in the process."

Mobile media sellers at the OMMA Mobile conference conceded that as the economy tightens, and ad budgets get sliced, digital will weather the storm. They spoke about how to win marketers.

What's going to be the impact of the potential Microsoft Yahoo merger on mobile? Panelists seem to think its going to slow down mobile inroads made by the two giants. "If this thing goes through...it's actually going to confuse Yahoo and Microsoft's mobile strategy," said Barry Chu, GM, advertising for white-label search provider Medio.

“We think it is going to be good for the market, because right now Google doesn’t have much competition. We feel with the merger of those two organizations there will be a lot more advertising for content providers,” David Goldman, CEO of Comedy Time, said during the aptly named “Giant Killers” panel at OMMA Mobile today. “If this thing goes through, it’s actually going to confuse Yahoo and Microsoft’s mobile strategies for a while,” countered Barry Chu, general manager-advertising at Medio Systems. ‘I don’t think it’s good for Yahoo and Microsoft in the mobile space. "I …

Well, according to the research team at IDC, they are (in alphabetical order): Aegis Mobile Enterprise Mobile Gearworks Hook Mobile INSIDE Contactless Medio mFoundry Mobile Posse Mobilians Vlingo Why do you need to know those names, because “in an industry that appears to be dominated by behemoths, a number of small companies are poised to potentially play larger roles in the mobile industry,” says the IDC report. “These small companies are hotbeds of creativity, new thinking, and innovation, but are essentially unknown to the …

Switching from the mobile titans to a panel featuring smaller, early mobile players (acquisition bait?), Jim Gregoire, vp, marketing at mobile social networking service MocoSpace emphasizes that the mobile Web isn't just cut and paste from the wired Web.

Microsoft's Glenn Myers makes an appeal for more case studies of successful mobile campaigns to help spur mobile ad growth. "That's one thing we could do as a group to start driving momentum in this space. He said Microsoft has seen success with mobile advertising in Europe and is just starting to mobile ads get traction in U.S., with recent launch of mobile MSN.

Like the early Internet, the seminal mobile media marketplace is in dire need of aggregation, and the team at mobile search developer Medio Systems thinks they've found part of the solution with its new On-Device Portal, or ODP for short. The portal, billed as the first "search-and-discover" consumer experience, is embedded on mobile handsets and is created specifically for mass-market mobile phone users. The beauty of the system is that it provides one-click access to specific mobile content categories such as real-time news, sport scores, weather, flight status and local directory information.