Everyone agrees: Mobile ads are going to be huge. So huge that everyone has been in agreement about their future promise for more than a decade...and we're still waiting for a single example of a mobile ad application that might actually be compelling.
Sure, they all sound good in speeches. For example, there's the standard one that has been breathlessly described by 99.8% of mobile ad enthusiasts since 1995:
You're walking down the street and you pass a Starbucks and your phone beeps and...voila!...IT'S A COUPON FROM STARBUCKS!
Think about this for more than seven seconds, unfortunately, and you realize that all this would do is make you want to throw your phone through the window.
Even the mighty Google is stymied when it comes to describing an exciting mobile ad play--although Eric Schmidt insists that this year is the year. Microsoft, meanwhile, seems to be having similar difficulties. SAI's Dan Frommer explains:
[Robbie] Bach also talked up mobile advertising -- and had a colleague show off a wonky, unimpressive, ad-supported mobile video game -- a throwback to "Space Invaders," in which Microsoft's "clippy" character (from MSFT's Office apps) danced around the cellphone screen as Microsoft's Sean Alexander shot at Dorito chips. We hope there's more to mobile advertising than this:
Yes, we definitely hope there's more to mobile advertising than this. But fear not: Someday, it's gonna be huge.
