A roundtable discussion on mobile advertising, hosted by mobile media company BuzzCity, has revealed that industry leaders feel that brands are not ready yet for the forthcoming 2012 London Olympics, and that there is an ‘Olympic mobile scramble going on among brands. With the expected influx of overseas visitors, roaming charges and network capacity are undoubtedly a concern for brands and advertisers and what impact it will have on mobile campaigns.
Other topics covered at the roundtable were predictions for 2012 – including mCommerce really taking off – as well as discussion of whether Microsoft and Nokias mobile platform will become a viable competitor to iOS and Android. The panel agreed that as in the early days of the internet, eBay and Amazon have become leaders in mobile, and provide great examples of how to make mCommerce work. While many sectors still lag behind when it comes to mobile advertising, other sectors have set great examples to be followed. Gambling was cited as an example of this – 25 per cent of bets for this year’s Grand National came via mobile. 
The consensus among the panel regarding apps was that brands have taken a ‘build it and they will come’ approach in their demand for apps, without thinking through how what they want to achieve with it. What is now key for brands is “building customer loyalty and retention”, it was suggested. App stores were described as the ‘holy grail’ for brands and it was agreed that, without such stores, many gaming brands would not exist.
The panel was chaired by  and featured Dr KF Lai, CEO and co-founder of BuzzCity; Anna Pikina, director of European sales at BuzzCity; James Connelly, managing director of Fetch, and Carl Uminski, chief operating officer and founder of Somo.