SAN FRANCISCO - An AT&T executive announced that the company is introducing a mobile advertising SDK to expand the use of hyper-local ads, during his keynote address at CTIA.

During the ?Is Local & Context the Game-Changer for Mobile Advertising? session, the executive said that AT&T is looking at scale, profitability, growth and ubiquity in its upcoming mobile advertising initiatives.

?For the past three years, AT&T has had a serious transformation,? said William Hsu, chief product of AT&T Interactive, Los Angeles.

?Mobile is hyper-local, it?s not dependent of where you are, but where you are right now,? he said. ?Local context is extremely important ? mobile is personal.

The AT&T Mobile Ad SDK will take assets in local and move it to mobile, per Mr. Hsu.

In addition, it will give mobile publishers access to AT&T Interactive's inventory of ads from nearly a million local advertisers across 4,600 categories, according to Mr. Hsu.

How it works
Mr. Hsu gave an example of the SDK with a banner ad unit using YP.com listings, designed for use with mobile apps for Android, iPhone and iPad.

Users can click on an ad on their mobile device. Listing results expand when clicked.

Users can click to call or tap again to see more information.

The pilot results featured a click-through rate three times the industry average, per Mr. Hsu.

Additionally, Mr. Hsu claims that there were geo-targeted impressions with guaranteed high coverage and attractive eCPMs.

Mobile beta
AT&T is looking for select publishers to join its beta program and monetize their inventory with the mobile SDK, as well as get first look at several ad units in development

According to Mr. Hsu, mobile is analog.

Mobile is different than the Internet.

Online is more about how long consumers spend on a certain Web site.

However, the killer app for mobile will enable companies to enhance and augment reality today.

?We?re not quite there yet with mobile advertising,? Mr. Hsu said. ?It needs to be hyper local.

?We can bring choice back to the equation,? he said. ?Mobile advertising needs to be personal.?
According to Mr. Hsu it is about marrying choice back with targeting, which makes it more relevant, more useful and a less intrusive experience for the consumer.

?It?s about the real would you live in and the device itself,? Mr. Hsu said.

In addition to being hyper local, mobile should be personal.

According to Mr. Hsu, there is an opportunity to bring choice and personalization that is not available online to consumers and free them from irrelevant and intrusive advertising.

?We believe that mobile advertising needs to bridge the analog and the digital world,? Mr. Hsu said.

?Interactivity is not about how to increase engagement with an ad unit,? he said. ?It?s about how to increase interactivity between the world you live in, yourself and the mobile device.?

The evolution of mobile
Mobile has changed throughout the years and now many are focusing on the tablet, which Mr. Hsu finds to be an interesting device.

?Today we view the tablet as a hybrid between online and mobile,? Mr. Hsu said. ?Pretty soon, tablets will enable new use cases ? we can see significant change in direction.

?Our goal is to help the entire ecosystem any way we can,? he said.

Final Take