Why Mobile, Social Networks and Microblogging are key sweetspots for advertisers

If you look the whole evolution of all media since 5.000 years ago, there are a few remarkable patterns.

First of all, the rise of interactivity.
Second, the rise of geographic scope.
Third, the increasing role of advertising as a business model, although not exclusively.
Fourth, the need by advertisers for more targeting, accountability and relevance for users.
Finally and most importantly, an increasing amount of possibilities to collect data on usage and users.

In our view, mobile phones and mobile internet are the future as they encompass all of the above media trends. Additionally, they are an effective combination of previous media (radio, tv, print, PC-internet, movies, telephone and even the older media). Mobile is the only true convergence medium, now and even more so in the near future. What we are witnessing today is just the tip of the iceberg taking into account the emerging technologies like augmented reality, LBS, speech recognition and the Multiverse, all driving usage and user data collection moments.

Furthermore, social networks and microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Identica collect a lot of user data as well. What are they doing ? There is no other way to collect more user data in our view. The most valuable data is the most recent data shared by users (real time lifelogging data).

Interestingly, the marketing and branding industry is migrating towards ever more targeting and relevance. Targeting is based on more user and usage data. As a result, the advertising ecosystem will slowly evolve towards the mobile social networks and microblogging offerings.

Tags: advertisers, real-time data, relevance, targeting