NEW YORK - Adding mobile to the marketing mix improves the effectiveness of cross-media ad campaigns, according to a panel at MediaBistro's ThinkMobile Conference & Expo in New York.

Companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Google and Nokia have all entered the mobile advertising arena aggressively. Panelists discussed how they are embracing mobile advertising, compared mobile tactics to online methods and talked about their approach to mobile.

"While mobile still isn't a line item in media budgets, the reach is there," said Michael Bayle, senior director of mobile adverting sales for Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. "Across the mobile industry impressions are in the billions and mobile page views continue to grow.

"You know you're crossing a chasm when you have to issue a press release detailing how much you're spending -- recently Land Rover and Jaguar committed $2 million to mobile, and that was a press-worthy event," he said. "Mobile is still nascent, but once you've got a rhythm behind it, it's transferrable across all the players and all media."

Mr. Bayle said brands are extracting mobile ad budgets from one of two places: from print and out-of-home above-the-line spend and below-the-line spend, especially digital ad budgets, which are transferrable to mobile.

While the mobile ecosystem is complicated, mobile does have differentiating characteristics, including targeting capabilities and unique metrics.

Many of the Internet giants have placed an intense focus on mobile, because that where consumers are.
Microsoft has a dedicated mobile team in charge of mobile display and search advertising,

"Today there is no reach issue in mobile, there's plenty of inventory, so there's absolutely no problem, but mobile advertising spend is still small compared to overall advertising market," said Marc Henri Magdelenat, director of mobile ad sales and marketing for Microsoft Advertising, Redmond, WA. "It's very interesting, though, to look at the growing mobile inventory and growing number of mobile page views.

"Mobile is exploding due to the the iPhone, due to the right price to browse on the mobile Web, the right devices coming out and faster networks providing faster browsing speed," he said. "We have the reach -- 1 billion page impressions per month."

Microsoft ran a campaign ran last summer for the launch of the Warner Bros. Pictures' movie Get Smart, which combined different channels such as online, mobile and gaming, with advertising in all of them.

The campaign included banners on the Web and mobile and access to specific content on the Web and mobile such as viewing the trailer.

Comparing the efficiency of online on its own to the online-plus-mobile campaign, Microsoft reported numbers that show the impact of adding mobile to the mix.

Viewing intent of the movie grew by 49 percent among people exposed the mobile components of the campaign, while brand favorability grew 46 percent, demonstrating that mobile helped to increase Web numbers.

Mobile represented 15 percent of Warner Brothers' global ad buy with Microsoft.

AOL's Platform-A discussed mobile campaigns for Ford, featuring video in expandable mobile banners, and for Virgin Mobile, featuring cross-media campaigns with Web and mobile components to promote its Sugar Mama program and various Virgin music festivals.

"The huge potential is there and we can see the coming magnitude of mobile's impact on the advertising world," said Phil Miano, national director of mobile advertising sales for AOL'S Platform-A, New York. "We selling digital advertising and extending it to mobile."

Google said that its mobile division is second only to search in terms of staffing, and its mobile advertising team leverages all assets on Google, including Maps, search, YouTube and the Android operating system.

"Mobile is an extremely large part of Google's business going forward, and it's a highly staffed strategic initiative," said Robert Victor, product manager of emerging technology for Google's DoubleClick, Mountain View, CA. "Display advertising on mobile is very important, as is mobile search advertising."

Google sees the mobile industry as much further along than it was even a year ago.

What is the big difference between now and a year ago?

"We see a lot of value in the high-end mobile devices merging the technology of the Web with the unique capabilities of mobile, and we can extend our Web technology to mobile," Mr. Victor said.

NBC approached Google's DoubleClick before the Beijing Olympics wanting to figure out how it could easily sell and deliver metrics to advertisers on the Web and mobile.

The company sold spots across all different media channels in Beijing, and saw a pretty impressive revenue lift, according to Google.

"Content is even more valuable in mobile than it is online, and it's important to assemble Web, mobile and video technologies," Mr. Victor said. "When it comes to cross-media buys, you need more tools than just mobile."

Many panelists stressed the fact that brands should combine mobile with all the other channels, including TV, online/digital and print, to take a global, cross-media approach.

Nokia -- an $80-plus billion company -- is unique among the companies represented in the panel because it focuses almost exclusively on the mobile channel.

In addition to its line of handsets, the company focuses on five areas of mobile: media, messaging, games, music and location-based services.

Its advertising services include targeting by location and demographics.

"We do see a tipping point in mobile, as we have many customers that spend on an annual basis in the millions, with a very high percentage of repeat purchases," said Tom Henriksson, head of Nokia Interactive Advertising, Espoo, Finland. "It shows that the business is growing a lot."

Nokia stressed that mobile includes display, search, messaging, pre-installed browser bookmarks on the 500 million Nokia phones sold annually and advertising embedded into applications.

Nokia said that about 15 percent of its campaigns are cross-media, where either a consumer starts on mobile and ends up on other media or starts on other media and ends up on mobile and maybe somewhere else after that.

Nokia ran a campaign for the Audi R8 where consumers could text in to get the sound of an engine revving on their mobile phone. Nokia placed mobile calls-to-action on billboards and magazine ads, and the advertiser deemed the campaign a success.

Nokia is also customizing mobile devices with brands such as Unilever.

The two companies partnered on a pink phone targeting the female demographic in Brazil. The phone was branded with Unilever's teenage-focused shampoo. The handset was preloaded with digital content that relates to the broader Unilever campaign.

"Mobile will play a huge role in advertising, because already today more people carry around a mobile phone than any other digital device, and in emerging countries it's the only digital device they have," Mr. Henriksson said.

"When you get the user experience correct you can create a very personal two-way dialogue with consumers," he said. "Mobile can provide three-to-four times higher engagement between consumers and brands."