Marketers are increasingly allocating more money to roll out mobile services. However, agencies are still trying to understand how to best use the medium to deliver value to their clients.

Agencies are making mobile a bigger part of the puzzle and are making sure their clients use the channel to boast their efforts. Although the mobile space is growing at a rapid pace, many agencies are still facing challenges. 

?Ad products and platforms are changing so fast that it?s hard to maintain a strong understanding of which tools work best for which marketing objectives,? said Dave Martin, senior vice president of media at Ignited. 

?Geofencing might be the right strategy for one client, but might have no application to the next,? he said.

?And with the dollars still pretty small, it?s hard for agencies to build out the resources they need to fully understand and execute in such a dynamic environment.?

Staying on trend
According to Mr. Martin, any agency that is not focused on building out their mobile practice is going to get left behind by those that are. 

Not only are consumers using mobile devices as much, or more than their PCs, but mobile also enables so many qualifiers that make consumers even more valuable to advertisers.

?Knowing that someone is within 500 feet of a client?s point of transaction might make them worth 10 times more than someone sitting behind their desk at work or at home watching TV,? Mr. Martin said.

?Mobile is no longer optional,? he said.

Agencies also have to keep up with the proliferation of new devices.

Gone are the days when solely iPhone and Android devices ruled the space. Now, tablets have also come into play. 

And, marketers need to first find out who their target demographic is and what their goals are before they execute any campaign.

?We?re going to see a lot of growth in mobile video and mobile search on both tablets and smartphones,? Mr. Martin said.

?In addition, with platforms coming into the market that allow total scalability, we?re going to see a lot more local advertisers jumping into mobile with technologies like NFC for purchases and geo-fencing; we?ll see more and more consumers using their phone in place of their credit cards in the coming year,? he said.

?A third trend is the use of the tablet as a second screen during TV viewing. Marketers are already exploring listening technologies that can serve relevant marketing content on a tablet even when someone skips through their ads on TV.?

Chasing mobile
The future of digital is mobile.

So, if the agency does not have a strong mobile capability and understanding of the space, then it is not really digital.

?What we see makes me believe that other, less prepared agencies are facing a crisis of capability,? said Chia Chen, senior vice president and mobile practice lead at Digitas. ?Over the last 6 months, mobile has become an urgent and strategic priority for many of our clients.

?They are asking for digital and marketing strategies that are mobile at the core and more sophisticated mobile tactics that have a clear path to business outcomes,? he said. ?These assignments require teams that can connect the dots between insights, technology, media, analytics and creative ? all through a mobile at the core lens.

?Not many agencies can apply both the mobile domain expertise and integrate the capabilities to create breakthrough ideas.?

According to Mr. Chen, over the next 6 to 12 months, agencies are going to see mobile become of the focus of loyalty programs and its potential as the medium of action starting to be realized.

?Overall, we are definitely going to see more and more clients making mobile a much more strategic part of their digital and marketing strategies,? Mr. Chen said.

A good organizational structure brings mobile expertise into each of the client teams, and makes mobile part of the normal digital process.

With today?s quickly changing mobile landscape, that can be challenging to do.

?Yes, agencies are still facing challenges when it comes to mobile,? said Harald Kruse, east mobile lead and senior strategy manager at Razorfish. ?Some of it is self-inflicted in the form of organizational challenges within the agency.

?Another challenge is bringing advertisers further along the mobile learning curve to communicate their message in the mobile medium,? he said. ?Current research is showing that consumers will respond to advertisements on mobile, but also that they want ads to be more relevant to the time, place and context of when they see it.

?The smartphone is incredibly versatile, and since it is with us constantly, there is no silver bullet to making an ad fit all contexts in which the phone is used. Agencies will have to continue testing new advertising capabilities that continue to sprout up.?

At this point, any agency that wants to be relevant in digital should already have significant experience in mobile media and mobile development.

While mobile ad budgets are still lagging behind the consumer usage patterns, the dollars are starting to shift towards mobile, so agencies who have not already invested in their mobile skills risk being left behind.

?Targeting media based on location is the hot topic of the moment, and the implication of using mobile to drive people into stores naturally follows,? Mr. Kruse said.  

?Retailers have taken note of this already, and this will continue to drive interest in mobile through the holiday shopping period,? she said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York