The impact and roll out of 4G networks may be the tipping point for mass acceptance of mobile marketing. This technology allows for greater speed, quality, and interactivity. While its a little slower rollout  in Canada than in other countries its a trend being driven by market forces that can not be ignored.

The attributes inherent in mobile marketing including; personalization, ubiquity, interactivity and localization, provide for significant potential for innovative forms of commercial and dialogue communications. The viral benefits as recepients forward advertising messages to their contacts can also not be ignored. Afterall, products and services suggested by a friend have more credence than those pushed by an advertiser.

A study completed by Oglivy and Acision indicates that personalization will be the key to adoption of mobile marketing and this means agencies and wireless providers will have to evolve their methods from pushing messages out to unwilling consumers to producing highly targeted, intuitive and behaviorial based messages that include a strong call to action. This is a media where the consumer is in control of what content will be delivered to their device. Behaviorial advertising where users do not pay for the data may be acceptable.

To date most of the digital revolution has taken place on a PC but the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones provides for enhanced social web experiences in real-time. Facebook reported 65m monthly mobile users  in September. This represents 20% of their 300m user database. Other social sites have also seen a surge in mobile usage. Sites like Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo are among the top mobile web destinations in the world.

Have we all been lonely behind our PCs? Forresters recent report “Why Mobile Could Reinvent Social Computing” points out that the “always on” mobile phone is fast becoming the glue that holds the social graph together.

I wonder what the mobile phone will look like in 2020?