Despite the ubiquity of these devices, marketers continue to struggle to effectively monetize the mobile channel. It’s time to step back, look at what makes mobile different and come up with some fresh thinking.

Mobile devices aren’t little desktops. They’re not even little laptops. Too much of the advertising taking place on these devices is rooted in what worked on the traditional Web. Banners on mobile browsers are for the birds. Tiny fonts and big fingers are a terrible combination. How many times have you inadvertently clicked an ad while simply trying to scroll or stretch or pinch a page? It’s great for click through rates, even if unintentionally.

Creativity takes the cake. When we see something novel we notice; it’s human nature. Marketers get this and they’re increasingly trying new ways to grab our attention in the mobile world. In-app advertising is a first step but a lot of it simply relies on what are essentially still banners. But some brands are doing interesting things with apps themselves – either as stand-alone programs or as part of a broader campaign.

One device, many use cases. The fact that we can talk about banner ads in the mobile browser, in-app ads and app-based campaigns speaks to the variety of use cases that exist on mobile. Within seconds a user can take a photo, customize it using Instagram, share it on Facebook and move on to browse the Web. In virtually every use case there is an opportunity for brands to engage.

A universal view of me and of you. One of the challenges with the various use cases described above is recognizing that the same user is performing them all. It may seem elementary but marketers have no way to bridge between the mobile Web and apps when it comes to recognizing their audience. The result is wasted impressions, the inability to do frequency capping and a less than optimal user experience.

Performance is paramount. Marketing on mobile devices is still marketing, and a big part of marketing is managing hundreds of billions of impressions on hundreds of millions of devices in tiny slivers of a second. While speed is critical, longevity is important too as it means customers can be confidently reached for an extended period of time.

Privacy, privacy, privacy. Marketers have played fast and loose with customer data, skirting best practices and turning a deaf ear to consumers’ requests for greater privacy protection. Mobile offers a fresh start – based on the concept of privacy-by-design – for the industry to give consumers the protection they want while still providing marketers with the data they need to create relevant and respectful relationships.

Mobile is exciting. It’s promising, fun, personal, immediate, intimate and it’s everywhere. Now is the time for marketers to create engaging connections with their customers that are just as exciting and promising and personal and fun as the devices they run on. It’s time for marketers to look at their audiences, the ecosystem and the available technology to deliver relevant content for engaging consumer experiences.

OPPORTUNITY: First, there are billions of mobile devices in the world and a growing number of them are smartphones and tablets. But as explosive as the growth has been over the past year, less than half of US mobile subscribers have smartphones. In the fast-growing BRIC economies, the levels of penetration are even lower: Brazil, 20 percent; Russia, 9 percent; India, 4 percent and China, 24 percent.

REWARD: There are literally billions of smart devices out there. It’s a market opportunity that can’t be overstated. In addition, as emerging markets continue to mature, taking the global approach advocated in past articles will open the way to tremendous revenue opportunities.

OPPORTUNITY: The growth in mobile isn’t just about broadening the base. It’s also about deepening consumers’ relationships with and reliance on their devices. The iPad is a perfect example of this opportunity. In less than three years, Apple has shipped more than 100 million of these devices and is on track to ship nearly 25 million in Q4 12 alone. Talk about reliance: consumers have downloaded more than 35 billion apps for iOS devices alone. 35 billion! Truth be told, as impressive as the stats for iOS are, Android has overtaken Apple in many markets.

REWARD: Virtually every one of those 35 billion apps provides an opportunity to deliver an impression to a consumer.

OPPORTUNITY: Today though, marketers are still only testing the potential of mobile. Incredibly, only about ONE percent of US ad dollars flows onto mobile platforms. One percent. There’s no reason for this, only excuses. In 2011 the mobile advertising market was less than $4B. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, it will jump to more than $18B by 2015.

That’s a big number, but it isn’t even the whole story. That’s only mobile advertising and the reality is that advertising is only one use case.

REWARD: There’s so much more that can be done in terms of mobile marketing – there are also dollars to be found in app download tracking, performance tracking, fraud prevention and more.

Start imagining all of the use cases multiplied by all of the devices across all of the geographies and you begin to see a market opportunity that quickly races into the tens of billions of dollars. The demand is there. The technology is there. It’s just a matter of recognizing and addressing the issues around the obstacles and approaching them raised in the earlier articles. Doing this is what’s right for advertisers, publishers, technology providers and consumers. There are benefits all the way around. It’s time to go get them.

Just look at what the Google Dev Team has to say about this issue:

“Device manufacturers are welcome to backport the change if they wish. However, Android 2.2 is final as far as our codebase is concerned — with the exception of critical bugs, we can’t really make changes to it. Regardless, there’s nothing that can be done to fix this on affected devices without an OTA, which is again up to device manufacturers.”

There is a better approach for the mobile advertising industry – Universal Device Recognition. This approach does not depend on a device-provided identifier like the Android Device ID, does not leave any permanent identifiers on the device and works across all devices all the time.

Forrester predicts that consumer purchases via smartphones will grow from $10 billion in 2012 to $31 billion in 2016 and smartphones will account for 3% of e-commerce in 2012 and 7% in 2016. With holiday shopping right around the corner, marketers need to have a mobile strategy that enables them to deliver the right impression on the right device.

Todays digital consumer is connected like never before, and with the number of personal devices multiplying at a rapid rate, marketers need to reach their target audience with the right impression.

Here is a fun infographic asking the digital media world  "Are you serving the right impression?"

Earlier this week, Mozilla – the creators of popular web browser FireFox, introduced their newest version of FireFox for Android mobile browser to the world. In addition to introducing  faster browsing and synchronization functionalities the Mozilla team has launched a full suite of safety features to help protect users privacy and security while surfing on the mobile web. The most exciting of these privacy features is Do-Not-Track (DNT) – a mobile version of the friendliest controls for consumer privacy in existence today and a feature that was introduced to the online community by Mozilla in 2009 and has been a feature of their desktop browser for a few years now.

Mozilla’s continued focus and innovative development around the consumer experience, not only in terms of features and functionality, but also for consumer privacy, has propelled the DNT concept to gain recognition and support from the FTC and the EU Commission as well as from all major desktop browsers (IE, FireFox, Opera and Safari have integrated DNT support – Chrome is expected to include by end of 2012 – but offers multiple browser plug-ins to extend this functionality to their consumers).  Until now, the DNT offering to consumers has been limited to browsers on desktop/laptop computers, essentially leaving the mobile community DNT-free even though mobile browser and application usage has been increasing substantially year over year. Will this move by Mozilla help usher in the same acknowledgement and implementation of DNT by mobile browsers that was seen post their introduction of this feature to the desktop world?  One can certainly hope!

Do-Not-Track is an ideal privacy solution, it is simple and IMHO, if my parents (who are not too computer savvy) can protect their privacy while on the internet with one simple click of a button, then what more could we as an industry ask for?  While this is important for standard internet use, this feature is incredibly vital for the mobile web as our phones continue to become an extension of ourselves – from our photos, calendar, work/personal email, banking, messages, Facebook, videos and soon our wallets.  The mobile web doesn’t stay at work or at home – it is with us at all times and where there is great value to personalization and convenience, there needs to be respect for people who need to cut the proverbial tracking chord for whatever reason they choose.

I personally, and the whole AdTruth team as well, applaud Mozilla for pushing DNT forward as the industry as a whole sorts out the details of how to make this standard work effectively for all parties. Unfortunately, we should not wait any longer – DNT is going to happen and needs to happen – and should not be used for leverage or for pandering or as a weapon against competitors or even to limit innovation…this solution was a result of innovative thinking and development and designed to allow consumers to feel they are respected and protected – which should be the goal of us all – not matter what government agency, advocacy group, ad company, regulatory body, tracking technology…we need to follow Mozilla’s lead and make DNT available to all consumers no matter how they access the web.

Thank you again Mozilla for leading the way!

P.S. This one is for you Sid.