Cellphones Must Be Even More Indispensable Before Advertising Makes Real Sense

This year is not the year that mobile advertising will hit a tipping point, and truth be told, that point may still be several more years away, according to a white paper written by Acision and OgilvyOne.

In the 13-page paper, the two companies teamed up to make the far-out prediction of what the mobile advertising industry will look like in 11 years from now, or in 2020. In a nutshell, they concluded that mobile advertising will be about collaboration and individual control, in which campaigns aren’t created for consumer categories, but instead for individuals, who will be able to participate in a conversation.

While those predictions sound fair, what was more insightful was the two companies’ comments about current state of the industry — not the future.

In a section titled “Year of Mobile,” mobile advertising still sounds like a distant hope, especially when you expand your ideas of advertising beyond a banner or text ad. The report concluded: “It can only be the year of the mobile if and when users do more with their mobile than anything else. And here this means the majority of the population does more with their mobile not just the tech savvy few with the high end devices. It is when the mobile device is truly used for all the touch points in your life.”

Clearly, with only a fraction of people buying smartphones, this is not the case today. And likely, full integration of the phone into people’s lives are still a ways off. “Interestingly the year of the mobile will also signify the death of the mobile phone as the majority of us currently know it. And from a mobile advertising perspective this blurs the boundaries between producing different creative and images for the different channel campaigns.”