Opinion: Mobile marketing trends for 2009

Posted by Alisa Zykova on January 5, 2009 at 10:06 PM

ZDNet's Mark Brill predicted on Monday that the mobile industry will grow in 2009, pointing out that mobile marketing in particular will see a rise.

Brill wrote in his top 10 mobile marketing trends list that advertising through text messaging and multimedia messages will grow, and that Bluetooth marketing is also expected to see an increase. In the United Kingdom, Bluetooth is no longer considered as a personal medium and advertisers have already begun to develop the technology's marketing possibilities.

Also expected to rise are mobile coupons and Quick Recognition (QR), a tool that allows a 1D or 2D barcode to be deciphered by taking a picture with a phone's camera. Brill suggests that while mobile Internet may be more popular than access from PCs, the trend may continue throughout 2009.

According to Brill, targeted and niche advertising will see growth across mobile platforms. Meanwhile, Location Based Services "will not take off" for financial reasons, Brill forecasts. The amounts that networks charge for location hits and the price of converting an area's post-code into appropriate Latitude/Longitude data may not offer a "significant enough" benefit.

Lastly, Brill states that the iPhone craze may fall in 2009, as he predicts the device will become "just another phone" within the expanding smartphone field.