Eran Hertzmann, Associate Vice President of Marketing at mobile marketing and advertising company Mobixell, which is a key contributor to developing industry standards on mobile advertising, explains why the development of standards is imperative to market growth

As the market potential for mobile advertising continues to excite players from all parts of the mobile ecosystem, the mobile industry is getting its house in order by developing guidelines to provide a framework aimed at gaining the confidence of advertisers and ad agencies to establish the mobile handset as a viable alternative channel to traditional media.   
Industry analysts estimate the growth of mobile advertising will continue to skyrocket, with current estimates of last years mobile advertising revenues of $2.7 billion (1.37 billion) predicted to rise to $19.1 billion (9.7 billion) by 2012.
Yet the reality today is that the industry is still in its infancy. A recent report by Forrester claims that around 30% of people have interacted with mobile ads, but only 1% had clicked on a banner ad while browsing on their handset.
While predictions abound on the size and shape of the market, there is also general consensus amongst industry pundits that the mobile advertising market is reaching a critical watershed, that will either make or break the market in the next two years. My own belief is that developing widely-endorsed and accepted standards on both a technological and user-oriented level is fundamental to securing a sound basis for the future growth of the mobile advertising industry. 
To gain the trust of both advertisers and consumers, we need to define a common understanding of what will be delivered to users, which is consistent, regardless of which operator is managing the network. It is vital that the value chain for all players involved is clearly defined and expectations and that inter-relationships between players are fully understood, in order for the business to flow freely and the lofty ambitions for this industry be fully realised.

Whos doing what on standards?
To tackle the plethora of technical and user acceptance issues, two industry bodies have stepped up to the mark in developing cross-industry standards to provide a framework for market growth: the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), working closely in conjunction with the GSM Association (GSMA). Each organisation is taking a different focus, the OMA looking at it from a technology standpoint and the MMA from a user experience perspective. 
Most standards published to date have focused primarily on the web browser and banner adverts.  More recently however the focus has turned to multimedia advertising, and video in particular.  Estimates from Juniper Research state that SMS campaigns currently account for the largest proportion of mobile advertising budgets, with nearly 1.5 billion mobile users on the receiving end of SMS advertising in 2008. But the increasing popularity of Mobile TV services means that ad spend in this area is predicted to rise from just $335 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. 
The MMA is focusing its efforts on the area of customer experience. This covers the actual creative that is used in the ad, through to how it looks when it is delivered to each individual device. Having already developed guidelines for banners ads for mobile portals, the MMA is now focusing its attention on MMS, SMS and video, and the results of their efforts are due to be published in the next couple of months. 
Mobixell has been a primary author of the messaging standards, which are intended to offer advertisers and their agencies clear guidelines on issues such as dimension, file sizes and file content. A key priority for the MMA working in conjunction with the GSMA is also to define a range of metrics that will allow advertisers to uniformly monitor the effectiveness of mobile ads. 
Mobixells own experience in working on a mobile advertising  campaign with a leading Tier 1 mobile operator resulted in us talking to a number of ad agencies involved in the process, to explain how an MMS ad should look, what size dimensions should be applied, and how to combine the Click2call functions to ensure a seamless and compelling user experience. This evident need for educating and assisting advertisers and agencies to develop a greater understanding of this new medium prompted us to renew our efforts to become involved in the whole standards initiative, as it became clear to us that a lot of the potential for this diverse and flexible medium is not being realised, or indeed fully understood, by key players in the value chain.
To ease the process, a large degree of interoperability and standardization is needed. Everyone needs to know what types of creatives could be used, and these creatives need to be supported all the way along the chain, starting from the graphic designer and going all the way to the handset.
The OMA, the other key standards body involved in the standards debate, has just completed a key phase in defining the architecture on which this technology will run. Its focus is primarily on the technology aspect of mobile advertising and it is addressing the major challenge of interoperability between platforms, services providers and applications.
The key areas it is focused on include personalisation, interactivity and metrics to ease reporting.  The area of personalisation and interactivity embraces broadcast services such as TV, and other content distribution services, embracing issues such as location, presence, user profile, device type and configuration, as well as P2P services such as browsing and MMS, where technologies in the devices need to facilitate features like Click2call, Click2buy, voting and coupons. 
Within the key areas of personalisation, interactivity and metrics, the OMA is seeking to specify guidelines regarding advertising metadata; its description and usage, as well as the enhancement of user profiles with advertising preferences and formats, designed to ensure a good user experience and interoperability. 
The end product of these deliberations – the MobAd Enabler – will provide a consistent architecture that is technology-agnostic, in order to provide service providers with a standardised and interoperable means of providing personalised and interactive advertising services, combined with the ability to reliably and consistently measure mobile ad effectiveness across the range of different types of ads, be they multimedia messaging, video, idle screen, content-funded or browser ads.

Why now and what remains unresolved?
With competitors like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft eyeing up the mobile advertising opportunity and looking for a piece of the pie, mobile operators and vendors are only too aware that the time to act is now. Unlike the Internet interlopers, mobile operators and device manufacturers have the luxury of enjoying existing relationships with the users. However, with that comes the responsibility to ensure that whatever route is taken with mobile advertising, customers are protected from being bombarded with irrelevant, intrusive adverts, ensuring that the user experience remains a positive one.
Undoubtedly, the standards bodies will play a crucial role in key areas like user experience and the interoperability of platforms, helping to instil much-needed confidence in all parties in the advertising ecosystem. Ultimately, my belief is that the mobile handset offers tremendous, as yet largely untapped, benefits to advertisers, as it is uniquely positioned as a personal device, which offers the potential for interactive, highly-targeted advertising that can benefit both advertiser and consumer. The secret to unleashing this potential will be in getting the balance right and ensuring that all parties enjoy a positive and rewarding experience, and my belief is that the definition of industry guidelines is key step along the road to making this happen.