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After an interesting week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, I took time to put 5 things down on what we learned related mobile and advertising:

1. Advertising spend is cut and moved to Blyk-like media. After a panel discussion I attended, a senior ad executive from Ogilvy came to me and said: “You know Timo, this year in advertising is about driving sales, sales and sales. The only thing people do for their brand is ensure that it is preserved while focus is on tactical sales campaigns. No brand building this year. And are the budgets cut or moved? Both – they are first cut, and the remaining moves below-the-line.” For a Blyk-like media this is not necessarily a bad thing as everything that gets a brand closer to its customer is now becoming increasingly important. This is certainly seen already as January 2009 was our best campaign month ever.

2. Mobile advertising fulfills variety of communications goals. “Our clients use mobile both for branding and direct response. Mobile can do both and it should be used to do both when appropriate for a campaign”, said Valerie Itey, Head of Mobile at Universal McCann in Spain. Another consensus was achieved that mobile needs to be integrated into the media mix. These are certainly our observations at Blyk as well: in 2008 our campaigns were equally split between awareness, engagement, driving sales and gaining customer insight. In the same GSMA panel discussion, Michael Smith, Deputy Director of COI Interactive from the UK, provided very good balanced views on this as well.

3. There are a lot of mobile advertising platforms around. It seems that everyone has one to offer. Literally, everyone: SIM card manufacturer, messaging platform vendor, WAP gateway provider, content provider, network infrastructure company and handset manufacturer. Even the ones making mobile phone chips have their ad platforms — not to even mention the traditional online brands, software companies, and focused mobile advertising platform developers. All these platforms do the same thing: campaign management, targeting and reporting, and are the best in what they do. It must be very difficult for operators to navigate in this environment where many people are selling platforms but only few are providing a business model to start generate revenues.

4. Mobile media is a strategic dilemma for operators. Almost every operator has mobile advertising among the top 3 strategic priorities in 2009, but most acknowledge that there is no strategy in place yet. The transformation from a telecommunications provider to a media company is a step to execute.

5. Mobile media is unique, and needs to be treated uniquely. Mobile is different to online, like television is different to radio. Mobile is about engagement more than any other channel. Mobile is a personal media built on communications between people, and generates a highest impact when advertising utilizes this unique nature. At Blyk we have taken this principle to youth market and built advertising on message dialogs – the same way you respond to your friend you respond to a brand.

Let’s see what 2009 will bring…