Windows Phone Thoughts: Mobile Marketing and Advertising to be Worth $3 Billion by 1Q 2008

"Yikes! That's some serious money! Looks like the advertising market is looking straight into the eyes of the mobile market. Wonder what type of advertising we will have to put up with. There better be some serious discounts involved here. I can't wait to see the type of devices we'll have by 2011. Personally I think the advertisement market has gotten way out of hand. So what do you think of ad supported marketing?"

Pete Paxton at Smartphone Thoughts has an interesting post on expected developments in mobile marketing via a study by ABI Research. In another five years, ABI expects mobile marketing to be worth over $19 billion, of which nearly half will be in the form of video advertising. Two things spring to mind here - first, it'll take a great deal of advances in over-the-air connectivity (both throughput and capacity) to achieve that kind of growth. We're almost there on that score with HSDPA/HSUPA, WIMAX and EVDO, though I'm not sure if ABI might be too optimistic on the take-up rates. Secondly, I for one get totally cheesed off by SMS advertising, and having video piped to my mobile and using up my precious bandwidth...well, you can imagine. The only saving grace for me is if this type of marketing will reduce dataline prices to commodity levels, but even then I'd be willing to pay extra to avoid intrusive marketing. Thoughts, everyone?