We attended ”MeasuringThe Third Screen: How Analytics Drives Mobile Marketing Success” lecture at R/GA, January 30, 2009. There was lots of wine, cheese and attendants. Three huge plasma screens were on the walls and a even huger projection screen showing the _RGA_ Twitter page was on the side wall, as the audience was encouraged to Tweet questions during the 6 minute 40 second speeches. Also known as 20 x 20 or 20 seconds for each slide. See Pecha Kucha. Here’s a quick top line of thoughts:

Richard Ting
ECD & VP, Mobile & Emerging Platforms
R/GA
- Basically said he can’t do great award winning creative without increased spending / budgets from clients on Mobile and that won’t happen without better Mobile ROI.

Debra Bluman
Partner, Communications Planning Director
Beyond Interaction
- Left me lost. I didn’t understand her point, unless that was the point. Meaning Mobile reach and effectiveness is currently immeasurable.

Steve Siegel
Senior Account Executive, Mobile
Microsoft
- Funniest and closest to the Pecha Kucha format. He “quickly” spoke of how Microsoft has been using Mobile for it’s clients and gave some interesting examples.

One thing I thought was odd is they did an iPod Mobile campaign for one client. Competition?

Microsoft leverages “mobile marketing” as it is consumer action oriented or (AOM) – Action Oriented Mobile. SMS / Text; magazine ads use call to action with text. Tag technology; photo recognition and sending. WAP, interactive ads for consumers. Over-all, how we currently use Mobile.

Adam Kerr
VP, North America
Bango
- Was the most informative and the last speaker. It seemed as if this was intentional as we need Mobile Analytics, not just Web Analytics functioning for Mobile – two completely different results – and Bango is a Mobile Analytics company. Instead of me breaking this down, just follow the Bango link, their site sucks by the way, and read about them. I found what they are doing extrememly important to ROI for Mobile.

One thing to keep in mind is you have to have a Mobile Web Site as Java and Cookies do not and will not work on cell phones. Too much information to process.

There were a number of question about “Location Marketing” through Mobile by GPS, but the technologies not there yet. Someone in the audience thought Android is close and combines Google Earth. Adam Kerr answered this and had a concern of intrusion, which made a lot of sense to me as seeing promotions and banners popping up on my cell phone would piss me off as a consumer when I walked or drove by a billboard or store. There is also the legal issue of privacy.

Then there’s the R/GA “10 Things” leave behind booklet here’s what AdFreak thought:

R/GA Channels Mao With It’s Little Red Books.