What does open mean for mobile marketers?

February 11, 2008

Frank Barbieri is CEO of Transpera

NEW YORK -- Could marketers attain the reach and standardization they find elusive on mobile through open platforms?

Thus deliberated panelists at the MediaPost-organized OMMA Mobile conference last week. They discussed whether openness would really accelerate adoption of mobile media by offering users more innovative content and applications.

"The term open is very similar to the term change -- everyone is for it, but it's hard to know what anyone means by it," said moderator Alan Chapell, president of media consultancy Chapell and Associates.

For some, the meaning of open is a bit clearer. Open can be another word for off-deck, or out of the wireless carrier's walled garden.

"Open is when there is no gatekeeper," said Webster Lewin, director of mobile marketing at R/GA, New York. "The real opportunity [in being open] is when [mobile] advertisements can drive purchase."

Mr. Lewin said it feels like anyone can set up a mobile site selling merchandise. A good example of mobile commerce is what Amazon is doing, he said.

Frank Barbieri, CEO of Transpera, said that a consumer wanting to do more on their phones is the definition of open.

The question is, how can you get into this medium and do the things you want to do?

"From a developer's perspective, how can you create the applications that can allow the consumers to do all the things they want to do?" said Christopher Payne-Taylor, chief marketing officer of AdMe Corp., Boston. "In order to do that, we have to have a platform that allows the maximum amount of innovation."

Mr. Payne-Taylor explained that at the end of the day the carriers have to realize that they really are in a whole other business. First it was a communications business and now it is a fully comprehensive media business.

"There's a certain piece that's going to be driven by the advertisers," he said. "This is a personal device, the most interactive medium in a technological age, and advertisers are obviously going to want to be a part of this."

Osama Alshaykh, chief technology officer of Packet Video, agreed that carriers have become a media provider. He said another factor of openness is that you can have everything on your phone, including a payments option. Security then becomes an issue.

"For many people that have been in the mobile ecosystem for a long time, the carrier portals are the last portals," said Dave Oberholzer, vice president of corporate development at mobile entertainment community Limbo. "Your company has to be good at building up audiences."