Mobile Marketing Evolution: A Prediction

There's one consistent pattern I have noticed for decades in the telecom business, and I'd be willing to bet the same pattern plays out in the mobile marketing business as well. New things start out when pioneers, typically exemplified by new companies, start making a business of the new innovations. 

As the new practices, channels, services and applications start to become mainstream, larger and established players move in and ultimately represent most of the sales volume. We saw that in the mobile business, in digital subscriber line, VoIP, the dial-up Internet access business, content distribution networks and cable TV, for example.

The big exception to this general rule is that a few of the upstarts will so dominate new parts of the ecosystem that they themselves will become the leaders. Google and Amazon come to mind. Still, over the long term, even large assets of this sort might ultimately be absorbed by other contestants in the ecosystem. 

In the mobile advertising business, that means specialists will prove the channel works. Later, though, the full-service agencies will simply incorporate mobile channels within their larger practices. We are quite some way from that sort of consolidation, however. Right now, it's a specialist's game.