NEW YORK - Panelists at yesterday's digiday: Mobile conference were bullish on the state of mobile marketing, despite the recession.

During the panel titled "The Elephant in the Room: The Economy," panelists discussed remaining barriers for scale and how the industry is overcoming them, as well as the impact that the recession will have on mobile. Panelists stressed the fact that brands that integrate mobile into their overall marketing mix are seeing excellent ROI.

"Big brands that are proactive marketers are saying ?We have to follow consumers, and they live on their cell phones,'" said Jordan Berman, executive director of media innovation for AT&T Mobility. "In a down economy, it's time to ratchet up innovation while others entrench to grab market share when the economy improves.

"Some of the most established companies like P&G and Coca-Cola are embracing mobile," he said. "Retailers are using the mobile phone as a marketing tool and a commerce platform, integrating mobile into their POS systems.

"As the biggest retailers cut man hours, the mobile phone becomes another sales assistant."

According to one panelist, teens and young adults -- well known for being heavy mobile users -- seem to be less affected by the down economy.

"Teens and young adults are the people that care about mobile and will be most influenced by it," said June Bower, vice president of marketing for Cisco-WebEx. "What's interesting is that teens still have money to spend.

"Another audience that's worthwhile to pursue is us -- adults now are in a position where mobile marketing can be influential," she said. "The iPhone has help spread the word so more people know that the Internet is on their phones.

"BlackBerry, Nokia, the iPhone and other smartphones have proliferated enough to be a pretty nice platform where advertisers can do more sophisticated, interesting things -- there are so many more opportunities than just a banner ad."

The mobile ecosystem is moving from mobile content publishers selling games, ringtones and wallpapers enabling complete transactions on the handset -- currently representing 80 percent of all mobile content sales -- to bigger brands launching more sophisticated, multi-platform initiatives.

"We're very bullish -- we feel that mobile has reached a tipping point, especially in the automotive, entertainment, retail and financial services sectors," said Mitch Paletz, head of premium publisher partnerships for Nokia Interactive.

"We're seeing repeat buyers, and while getting new organizations to invest in mobile is a little more challenging, there are other good signs, like global buys and up-front buys," he said. "Big players like P&G, Unilever and Ford see value in adding mobile marketing and advertising into their mix."
Brands need to take advantage of the unique aspects of the mobile channel, though.

"Banners are good in the short term -- they're most prevalent and they're working today," Mr. Paletz said. "In the longer term, brands should utilize consumer data as a way to inform mobile advertising -- where they are, what they want to do, who they are, demographics.

"Mobile ad units need to change to be more appropriate," he said.

As more companies in various sectors see competitors investing in mobile, more and more will follow suit.

"Mobile campaigns could act as a catalyst for competitors," said Jorey Ramer, founder and vice president of corporate development for JumpTap. "Mobile is a differentiated medium that helps brands stand out where others might not be investing yet.

"Surveys are reflective of an increased investment in mobile, and we're quite bullish even in this economic environment," he said. "We've gotten over a lot of barriers -- handset capabilities, browser capabilities, more standardization, mobile devices providing a better brand experience for advertisers.

"There's also more consumer awareness of data services and more people are accessing the Internet with high-end phones."

Marketers need to take advantage of technology and data assets to provide consumers with content that is relevant and resonates with them.

"With smartphones like the iPhone, mobile is getting to the point where it's better than the Internet," Mr. Ramer said. "It's the Internet on steroids."

One panelist cited three scenarios: companies with a younger early adopter target demographic that have to be in mobile, technology companies that want to be perceived as innovative and companies with experimental budgets willing to test pilot the medium.

While the third area has seen cuts, with fewer innovative budgets, the first two are going strong.

"We've been pleasantly surprised, as we have a lot of clients going into the basics in mobile, like SMS and mobile Web ads, looking for ROI," said Maria Mandel, senior partner/executive director of digital innovation for Ogilvy. "Brands are going where the mass eyeballs are, and 60 percent of U.S. consumers use SMS and 20 percent use the mobile Web.

"We need to make it easier for brands to develop and create campaigns on mobile," she said. "The iPhone made it easy to create and publish apps, and we need to make it easier across the entire ecosystem."

The bottom line is that despite the recession, brands that have experimented with mobile in the past are increasing their mobile marketing spend, and even brands that haven't used mobile to date are dipping their toes in.

"Is the economy affecting business? Yes," said Rob Wilk, vice president of ChaCha. "However, creating an SMS ad doesn't take a whole lot of work -- it's not a big production.

"We have seen people say, 'This is something I can really experiment with,'" he said. "It doesn't take a million dollars or a ton of people on staff to produce results."