NEW YORK ? The big guys upstairs focused on everything from SMS to the iPhone during a panel at the Mobile Ad Summit.

Moderated by Charles Johnson, general manager at Microsoft Mobile Advertising, New York, the session explored the five key factors of success for mobile advertising agencies. Mr. Johnson threw out five questions for the CEOs based on compelling creative, message targeting, performance and analytics, industry collaboration and marketing integration.

Each company leader answered crucial questions about where to head in the future from an agency perspective. The panel was comprised of Alexandre Mars, CEO of Phonevalley and head of mobile at Publicis Groupe, Michael Collins, CEO of WPP Group's Joule, Phuc Truong, managing director at Mobext and Larry Harris, CEO of Ansible Mobile.

Here is what they had to say:

What does a compelling creative mean in mobile?
Mr. Truong: Well, to start, the iPhone has been able to do great things from a creative standpoint such as rich media executions and video streaming capabilties. There are a lot of rich executions that are coming out and it?s only a matter of time until there are more companies in the space to feed the industry.

Mr. Mars: When I started this agency, we went and met a lot of clients, and back then it was only text-based programs. It was really tough to make them understand that, at some point, mobile will be big.

Now, and in the last couple of months, it?s much easier because now those guys in creative are used to gearing their concept to mobile.

What clients want and need is to dream about something, and when you can show them these really interesting things we can do, it all comes back to executing on a concept.

If you can find the greatest or newest concepts, that?s important. But, it?s impossible to run before walking, so make brands learn to walk before running. Go back to basics.

For us, it?s a combination of ideas and concepts, technology and media.

I think if we can take this combination and implement it from the point of entry with our clients, and we won?t have to wait until next year for people to catch on. More people just want to understand mobile and when they do, the better it will be for all of us.

Mr. Collins: For compelling content, mobile as a channel is very unique, but it?s going to be different than other channels.

Mobile is not about preaching the way television is. It?s a highly interactive channel. Compelling creative is far better at developing an engaging dialogue.

Mobile can bring engagement, stir dialogue and establish and maintain a dialogue with consumers, which is what brands want.

Why is partnership and collaboration within the industry important to its success?
Mr. Collins: Mobile is a very complex ecosystem. It is incumbent on all of us to find partnerships to help mature the industry as quickly as possible. There has to be a lot of collaboration between all of the players in the ecosystem to get us to reach mobile's potential as fast as possible.

Mr. Johnson: What?s really important, from an agency perspective, is to build an ecosystem. It will take an ecosystem to have any success and sometimes that takes collaboration with people you may not think are necessarily your friends.

How does relevancy in message targeting drive campaigns?
Mr. Truong: Something that resonated well with our clients is that with mobile, we can take the unique targeting abilities of mobile such as device, carrier and location and combine that with an environment where the client already understands the reporting.

We advise our clients on the strategy of it and then we explain the targets after. Based on usage data, we can set up the mobile tactics.

To reach the younger demographic, we would turn more to SMS, as it?s the lowest common denominator, to help execute on the campaign?s behalf. If we?re talking about the browsing environment, we could talk to a whole slew of ad networks to target properly.

It all really depends on the tactic you choose based on the consumer?s usage of their phone's functionality.

Mr. Harris: Hyper-targeting seems to be really effective. It?s important to think of where your target is and how they use the phone.

I care about whether people are interacting with my brand. I want to know how they use the phone, what kind of media they see in the world and if they can raise their hand and say ?yes, I want that.?

When you see how the consumer uses the phone, you can target clearly within just the mobile channel, but it gets even richer when it is integrated. You can measure who you are talking to through other channels.

With that in mind, nothing is going to be bigger than location-based technology. Location will be huge all around the world. It will be something we do in exchange for privacy.

We don?t have quite the same abilities as the carriers, who can understand your location within 1.5 meters. Overall, location information will be huge for targeting.

Going forward we will be successful if we can achieve the no-phone-left-behind mentality.

We?re all doing smartphone stuff, but the bulk of the world has crappy phones and big brands don?t pay you to just reach the rich moms.

SMS works. It?s not sexy, but it needs to be part of what happens with your brands.

Mr. Mars: I sat down with a client the other day who was spending quite a bit of money in the digital arena and didn?t want any mobile component. I was trying to tell him we could target by handset, and he was shocked.

You need to evangelize and explain the key performance indicators, not only click-through rates and page impressions.

How is measurement the key to campaign success and the future of the medium?
Mr. Truong: I think the space is moving forward in back-end targeting, something along the lines of assigning a session ID to various users and tracking them over time. It?s still getting worked out, but shows huge potential.

Mr. Collins: I think from an SMS standpoint, we have so much that we can measure. With every click the user makes, you can reach a very rich profile. The pool of data we have to operate from should increase several hundred percent in the coming months and years.

From a business standpoint, we?ve never had a client say that they won?t do mobile because it isn?t measureable enough. To get to the real dollars, we will have to be able to present a good return on investment.

In a multichannel campaign, how is mobile the straw that stirs the media mix?
Mr. Harris: A great advantage for mobile is that traditional advertisers can arrive at mobile and use radio, television and print to drive consumers to mobile. So much of what we should be doing is taking traditional advertising and leveraging it with mobile to get a better result.

It?s a straw because it?s measurable. Big brands are looking to see which part of their money is being spent effectively. Increasingly, mobile calls-to-action demonstrate the efficiency of the other part of a media spend.

What is still being learned, across advertising as a whole, is what is going to be an interesting conversation between brands and consumers.

So much of mobile is social. We want to give the consumer that American Idol moment that shows that you understand them.

Putting the consumer as the center of your focus, you should think about how the offer speaks to them and make sure you are giving them what they deserve for raising their hand and engaging.

Mr. Truong: Everyone should know that mobile is a channel and not a strategy in and of itself. It is the best way you can have a conversation with someone because mobile reaches them wherever they are.

Then, you can use the initial dialogue to get them into other channels, even via a phone call or email.

The fact that you have it with you wherever you go makes it a great conversation tool. We preach to all of our clients, ?Wherever you can integrate mobile with other channels, do it!?

Mr. Collins: I agree with the audience-centered approach. Mobile can make passive communications active. Everything you have had has been passive. Print and out-of-home and all of the other traditional channels can be the kick-off of a continuous conversation with the consumer.

With those degrees of interactivity in place, you can have these channels work as one huge channel to have the best possible conversation with a consumer.

I see it more as the glue that pulls it all together.