By Bob Walczak

To plan for the future, you must first understand the past. In this case, the mobile industry is following the evolution of the Internet -- not just in advertising but also with devices and data connectivity.

The comparisons below speak for themselves:

Online Mobile
? Pre-Internet PCs Voice only phones
? Dial-up G1 & G2 networks
? AOL Walled garden Carrier Decks
? SSI Ad Servers SSI Ad Servers
? Laptops Smaller media-focused phones
? DSL & Cable 3G & 4G networks
? Third-party ad servers Third-party ad servers
? Agency Dashboards Agency Dashboards
? Cookie Cookie

Mobile today is comparable to about where it was in 1997 or 1998 online. As it is becoming increasingly mainstream, the networks are getting faster and the devices are becoming smaller and more functional.

So what happens now?

As the mobile market continues to expand, mobile advertising becomes increasingly viable.

In fact, more agencies and brands are realizing that mobile has the reach and scale to target the right audience at the right time. This alone warrants paying attention to the mobile medium as a viable advertising channel.

When online hit a critical mass, an advertising tipping point occurred. Visibility, real-time optimization and interoperability were no longer "nice to haves" -- they were requirements.

Agencies weren't interested in multiple reports from disparate systems that counted clicks and impressions differently. A single, unified report for all publishers was critical to evaluating campaign ROI.

Omnicom Media Group's OMD's mandate is the first of what I believe will be an industry trend requiring third-party verification and management of mobile campaigns (see story).

Unfortunately, most first-generation mobile ad platforms were not designed with this in mind. They were designed to be self-contained networks or systems that echoed early mobile's walled-garden approach.

A simple thing such as hosting a creative in a secondary location using an SSI architecture requires engineering resources to design a kluge to fix the issue.

While this may be more cost-effective in the short term, it does not help the transition to the inevitable next generation -- or current online equivalent -- architecture known as third-party.

Once the mobile market finds its way through the challenges of advancing its systems to be full third-party ad servers with no server to server calls or ping backs to agency systems for accounting of impressions and clicks, I believe the market will be viewed as a subset of digital, not mobile.

Then the fun begins with cookies, behavioral, real-time context engines and all the other "luxuries" found online.

Bob Walczak is CEO of mobile ad network Ringleader Digital, New York. Reach him at .