by Bob Walczak, CEO
MoPhap

After playing with the iPhone, I have several comments – good and bad. But as it relates to advertising, this phone will play a major role in shifting the interactive advertising paradigm.

Safari browser delivers

The iPhone’s Safari browser works so well that it allows subscribers to view regular Web pages – and does it amazingly well. (I admit this as a major skeptic of the iPhone before using it.) This means that if other phones incorporate the same functionality (Beware: Mac created a downloadable version of Safari for Nokia phones), companies involved in interactive advertising had better figure out how to create ad formats that work in both online and mobile environments.

Ad formats & device functionality

The iPhone doesn’t support Flash, though it does enable Java Scripting. This has its pros and cons, and it means that sites will have to ensure that they can identify the iPhone and serve the appropriate ad formats.

Along the same lines, targeting ads by device functionality will be a huge consideration. Currently, there are more than 11,000 mobile phones on the market. Some handle animated .gifs or Flash-lite, while others have wide screens, better resolution, etc. I could go on, but the point is this: With the iPhone, there’s far more to consider when targeting and creating an interactive ad campaign.

iPhone blazes the path in interactive advertising

The mobile and online worlds are merging at a phenomenal pace, and the iPhone is blazing the path. It’s not that the iPhone is so great – the keyboard is horrible, for starters – but the iPhone has made the mobile Internet, cool, usable, and trendy. Ultimately, this will increase usage, and there will be far more reach and frequency in mobile.

If the iPhone moves the data-usage needle, which in turn increases device sales – you can guarantee that other device manufacturers will follow suit. As the population increases its mobile media consumption habits, media companies, brands, and agencies will have no choice to but to think through how they’ll play together in the converging interactive world.

Bob Walczak is CEO of MoPhap (Mobile Phone Applications, Inc.), a leading mobile advertising serving provider and publisher network.

 Related links: NY Times,  Cnet

Tags: adsdaq, contextweb, mophap, google, yahoo, doubleclick, rightmedia

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