An opinion piece on the MediaWeek website argues the case that mobile advertising is already becoming a powerful form of marketing, if used with the right strategy. Despite their smaller screens, different operating systems, richer location information and different use cases, compared to PCs, the author says that mobile platforms offer varying degrees of richness and interactivity, with strong marketing results now being achieved across them all.

Mobile marketers can track and measure conversion rates as well as the impact on brand metrics. Similar to PPC advertising, mobile marketers can track the cost to drive a purchase, opt-in, subscription, registration or phone calls so they can quantify their cost per acquisition. No big surprises here and these metrics are essential to gauge how a mobile campaign works, but the use of mobile marketing requires a particular strategy to target the type of users and business services that will get the best results.

On a similar subject, a blog on the MediaPost website also discusses the growth of online advertising and the role of mobile Internet devices which are helping to speed up the changes in advertising and measurement. The argument is that this growth will enable target marketing, interactive research, social referrals, hyper local discounts and secure quicker commercial transactions.

However, advertisers in the US spend only 8% of their dollars on the Internet, whereas consumers spend about 38% of their media time there, meaning that opportunities are currently being wasted by advertisers not targeting new media's unique real-time opportunities to build awareness, loyalty, referrals, purchases and repeat business. That means using a combination of online, social network and Internet mobile devices to make advertising relevant, and therefore, more valuable to individuals.