Judging by the volume of press releases at WMC, mobile advertising is the hot topic in the mobile industry. The clear driver for this trend is the advertising industry itself: cognizant that mobiles are a vast untapped billboard space and the time people spend looking at their mobile rivals that of any other media.

Whether users actually want their mobile to become an advertisers play thing is unclear. Equally whether these adverts will be effective is another, For mobile advertising to work it needs to offer the user something. One model is to subsidize other products and services, however this may only be acceptable at the budget end of the market. Those mobile users investing in high end devices and large minutes and data plans, are unlikely to want the interruptions created by advertising, This does not preclude serving adverts to this community, however those adverts need to be unobtrusive and relevant.

Gypsii may be one company that has the mix right. Gypsii is a social network based around GPS mobile phones (running on Symbian [S60 with UIQ to follow], Windows, and BlackBerry devices.) Gypsii allows it users to upload geographically tagged images and video, share their location, and download content created by others to their device. When users download other content it can be for their current location, when users do this Gypsii serves up adverts in the content stream. These adverts are unobtrusive, they appear as a thumbnail in the same way the user generated content does. It is only if the user selects an advert that the full advert is downloaded and displayed or played. Furthermore the adverts are proximity based. They might be a local cafe or shop. Most common web searches are for business within a few kilometers of the searcher location, so this model looks useful.

Gypsii's business model involves giving the client to a device manufacturer or operator and then sharing part of the click through advertising revenue. Gypsii believes that through this model, the share of advertising revenues with a device manufacturer could equal the factory gate price of the device over it lifetime. Assuming this is achievable, it is clear why Google is so desperate for Android to be a success.

Overall however, I doubt the mobile adverting market will turn out to be that lucrative, after an initial honeymoon period. Given the success of earlier much hyped mobile technologies which have failed to be the “next big thing” this may seem an easy statement to make. However, in other medias users are getting adept at filtering out the adverts which is why marketing is inexorably shifting to a viral model. This ability or desire to bypass overt advertising will undoubtedly be the biggest challenge for this emerging segments.

So now it is time to leave a cold, but largely sunny, Barcelona and start the long trek back to New Zealand. This offers a huge opportunity to mull further on the weeks events and start work on bringing you in depth coverage of the technologies I've seen at the Fira.

I will leave you with a couple of images of what is arguably Barcelona's lasting legacy, the architecture of Saudi.