CHICAGO ? A national show with a regional feel, ad:tech Chicago may have attracted fewer delegates and exhibitors this year, but its commitment to new media such as mobile has not flagged.

The two-day show that ended yesterday devoted three sessions to mobile marketing, focusing on metrics, integrating the medium with other channels and the move towards mobile social media. Each session lasted one and a quarter hours, offering a rare deep dive in mobile for a Midwest show.

?Look at your marketing funnel: Mobile can be uniquely positioned at every level,? Paul Kultgen, director of client service for mobile media and advertising at Nielsen Online, told a room full of interactive marketing executives attending ad:tech at Chicago?s scenic Navy Pier.

Mr. Kultgen?s session focused on mobile metrics. It was acknowledged that educating brands and investing in growing awareness would play a key role in quicker adoption of mobile marketing.

In fact, a major challenge for mobile marketing firms is to convince marketers to up their ad spend on mobile from less than 2 percent that is currently attributed to the channel.

?The biggest thing we?re seeing in the mobile marketplace is brands having a place to point to,? said Jim Ryan, associate director at Publicis Groupe?s PhoneValley.

Indeed, brands are torn between the different mobile channel offerings such as applications, mobile Web sites, SMS programs, rich media and social media.

To top it all, brands are torn over the issue of assigning labels to mobile efforts: CRM or branding? As the panelists pointed out in their ?Mobile Metrics and Research for Marketers? session, it depends on the use case.

?We see not so much as revolutionary, but evolutionary,? said Bruce Braun, CEO of Agent-M, an independent third-party mobile advertising verification service.

KISS
Perhaps advertisers are cottoning on to the virtues of mobile marketing. More advertisers are willing to spend between $300,000 and $500,000 on mobile ad campaigns, albeit they are the exception rather than the rule, Mr. Braun admitted.

Getting the agency?s buy-in is a different story. A 15 percent commission on a $100,000 mobile ad buy is not going to cut the mustard for most shops, not with the effort that goes into measuring the performance of such media.

Television, for example, is a straight media buy with spots and performance tracking, with no worries about wireless carriers, handsets and screen sizes.

Mobile marketing firms should strive to improve and simplify tracking capabilities for ad agencies handling their clients? budgets, Mr. Braun said.

?You want to make it a comfortable medium that they can get it and they want to make it profitable,? Mr. Braun said.

The same rule of simplicity applies to pitching mobile directly to brands. There is a phrase for it: MEGO ? my eyes glaze over.

Indeed, advertisers do not even want a new set of metrics. They would prefer the same dashboard to measure key performance indicators.

?The higher the level of management, the less they want to get into the weeds,? Mr. Braun said.

?Clients want to know, ?If I spend a dollar in advertising, will I get $2 in sales??? he said.