According to news announced at the beginning of the week, the mobile research group Telephia will be partnering with Third Screen Media, a mobile phone advertising firm, with plans to provide information for potential marketers for the mobile platform.
Telephia will apply its research questions of user preferences and interests and make that information available to Third Screen's clients, putting together information for advertisers to better plan mobile media ad campaigns or transmedia/cross-platform campaigns that include a mobile component.
Daisy Whitney with TelevisionWeek points out, "This data, on demographics and interest in mobile services for instance, can also help agencies and publishers target mobile audiences with their campaigns and refine their messages based on the consumer research Telephia has conducted.
Finding ways to better measure and monetize mobile spaces for ad spending is part of the growing drive to map out the still murky waters of the mobile media world.
Back in December, I wrote about Richard Siklos' NY Times article on the slow growth of mobile media. "Mobile has not yet amounted to a meaningful new media business--and for two vexing reasons," he wrote, citing logistics and revenue models as major holdups.
However, UK's Juniper Research has predicted that the global mobile entertainment market will reach $76.9 billion in 2011, up from 2006's numbers of $17.3 billion.
I wrote about this report back in December, summarizing that:
This large upswing in content will come along with a shift in the types of mobile entertainment people are consuming over the next five years, their report estimates. While, for now, the majority of mobile content focuses on music, and principally on ringtones (More than 80 percent of mobile music revenues are for ringtones, according to Ben Macklin with eMarketer.), the shift will come with revenue from mobile television and mobile games, which they estimate will exceed the money generated by mobile music by that time.And, while the U.S. has put anti-Internet gaming legal restrictions in place, gambling is expected to make more revenue than mobile music in other countries as well.
Macklin also highlights that another major shift in mobile media over the next five years, according to Juniper's estimations, is a large increase in the amount of consumption in North America, citing that North America currently makes up only 14 percent of the global market for mobile content, with the Asia-Pacific region and Europe dominating worldwide consumption. However, that is expected to shift somewhat by 2011, according to Juniper's estimations.
The porn and sports industries are two areas in particular that are expected to see significant growth (no porn pun intended here).
And we already have Verizon edging into the mobile advertising space.
Oliver at MobileCrunch writes of the Telephia/Third Screen Media deal, "The demographic and psychographic slicing and dicing that Telephia is capable of providing can be the catalyst for delivering highly appropriate, highly valued advertisements that arrive on the consumer's handset at the times when he or she is "statistically speaking" most likely to be in the mood to buy something or at least be favorably inclined towards one brand over others in the crowd."
We shall see.
