PQ Media CEO Patrick Quinn highlights the growth of mobile advertising and marketing, noting that spending has increased at 3.5X across the communications industry broadly in the last five years, and by 20 to 40 percentage points. Mobile marketing and advertising itself has grown eight- fold, while mobile content and access has tripled. But the latter is a much larger market -- about $39.5 billion last year compared to $3.3 billion for marketing and advertising. Within just paid advertising in mobile, in-game ads and search have been the top categories, while on the marketing side, location-based services, coupons and apps …

With "hundreds" of sources for mobile and social data out there, "why do we even bother to publish," PQ Media Founder and Chief Patrick Quinn humbly said this morning, while setting up his presentation on his company's new "Mobile & Social" media marketplace analysis.

Patrick Quinn, CEO of research firm PQ Media, took the podium at the Mobile Insider Summit this week to offer a preview of the firm's upcoming U.S. Mobile & Social Media forecast. He noted that to date, no one source has sized, structured and analyzed the entire mobile, social ecosystem.

Michael Bayle, senior vice president and general manager of ESPN Mobile is explaining the whole "surround" concept behind ESPN's mobile strategy, and it's basically to follow the sports fan to places where they otherwise could "not be able to watch television at that time."

MediaPost's Mobile Summit in Key Largo opened with some news this morning. During ESPN Mobile General Manager Michael Bayle's opening keynote, he announced that ESPN has partnered with mobile app monger Shazam to televise the first live sports broadcast ever enabled by Shazam.

What’s unique about mobile? It’s a live experience. ESPN tries to capitalize on that by offering a surround experience across screens and through social properties like Twitter that let people interact. It also has a program set up for asking fans for feedback about their mobile experience with ESPN to help guide future development. Part of that will be to build up the network’s m-commerce offerings. In that vein, its added the opportunity for fans to buy tickets in partnership with StubHub as they’re browsing other content. It’s all about encouraging an impulse buy via mobile, says Bayle. He also …

 Kicking of the Thursday sessiosn is keynoter Michael Bayle, SVP and GM, ESPN Mobile, who joined the sports media giant last fall. He says focus is on delivering programming anytime, anywhere. Mobile becomes the first screen. In terms of usage, he audience for ESPN Mobile has reached over 20 million. Fans are spending 45% more time, year over year—at any one time 150,000 people are using ESPN Mobile. It’s now ESPN’s fourth largest network. When it comes to platforms, Android is surging, but the sports network works across all smartphone operating systems. And, of course, it has scores of apps. …

2011 saw the share of mobile traffic and m-commerce doubling during holidays, and brands are getting well beyond the testing stage when it comes to mobile advertising.

Gary Reisman, co-founder of NewMediaMetrics, doesn't like like. In fact, he just told attendees at the Social Media Insider Summit that likes will soon reach the point of becoming meaningless - at least as a brand metric.

"The opposite side of social shopping is social production," Lance Neuhauser, CEO of The Echo System, just explained during the "social shopping" panel at the Social Media Insider Summit.