SAN FRANCISCO - A panelist at CTIA said that although mobile location-based advertising is effective, there are no big spenders flocking there.

During the "LBA: Linking Location with Key Consumers Demographic and Interest Areas" panel, the speakers discussed the importance of delivering mobile location-based advertising messages to consumers. The session was moderated by Dev Khare, partner at Venrock Partners, San Francisco.

?For us, it?s about reach,? said Dan Gilmartin, senior vice president of business development of Where, Boston. ?You have to think about how do you generate the reach as an advertiser.

?We talk to big brands everyday and a lot of them are looking for brand impressions,? he said. ?They just want to get their brand out there and that may suffice for a brand that just wants impressions.

?Location is important, but without context, it?s irrelevant ? relevance works.?

Location, location, location
Advertising success has always been measured on consumer response.

Linking location with target demographics and interest areas has been shown to increase effectiveness, according to the panelists.

Brands use different location-based marketing tools to reach consumers such as SMS and bar codes.

Anne Bezancon, founder and president of Placecast, San Francisco, finds that SMS is the most effective.

?SMS is not as sexy as what you can do with applications, obviously, but brands can talk to everyone,? Ms. Bezancon. ?If you want to do marketing, which all brands want to do, you should use SMS as the medium and location as the method.

?Our phones are an extension of ourselves,? she said. ?I firmly believe that in the future we as users will choose what we want to see.

?Even if I like a brand, I don?t want to be receiving five messages a day from them.?

Ms. Bezancon said that brands should go back to their roots and focus on quality.

?There?s no measure of quality,? Ms. Bezancon said. ?And that?s what we have to get back in mobile ? the measure of quality.?

SMS is key
Fred Boos, president of RocketBux, Eugene, OR, agreed with Ms. Bezancon about the importance of using SMS.

?For us, text is the base of a pyramid,? Mr. Boos said. ?That?s where a consumer is aware of an actionable item.

?We embed links into 70 percent of our texts and we?re growing with consumer adoption of our links,? he said. ?We sort of grow along with the adoption of those handsets."

Additionally, scale plays a key role for Rocketbux.

?This topic of scale, that?s where we?re at with mobile marketing and mobile advertising,? Mr. Boos said. ?We have to be more passive as an industry.?

Location-based advertising
There is no money in location-based mobile advertising, according to Rip Gerber, president/CEO of Loc-Aid Technologies, San Francisco.

?It?s about $1 million to do a Superbowl ad,? Mr. Gerber said. ?No company is doing a $1 million campaign on mobile today, and why not??

?In the mobile world, you have to opt-in, that?s why big brands like McDonalds are playing around and testing, but they?re not putting down $1 million for it,? he said. ?That?s what has to break - carriers need to step up and help us enable people.

?Only they have that kind of reach.?

Mobile reaches more consumers than the PC Internet, per Mr. Gerber.

?Today, you can locate every single one of your customers ? as long as they consent,? Mr. Gerber said. ?You can?t do that on the Web.

?We can do everything we can on mobile and more,? he said.

More than ads
Marketing is more than just serving a banner to consumers.

?One thing that has been missing in the market place, in my opinion, is if you aren?t using location, you?re not maximizing the potential the mobile device has,? said Lisa Peterson, director of mobile solutions marketing at Neustar, Reston, VA.