From If to How Much

We recently attended a mobile event in Boston where Jumptap CEO Dan Olschwang was asked about how brands view mobile advertising - the market of Jumptap. Referencing the recent acquisitions of Admob by Google and Quattro Wireless by Apple, he said "One billion dollars moves a market. Their attitude is no longer if, but how much." So brands have moved from asking themselves if they should be advertising more on mobile phones to how much they should be advertising on mobile phones. They see value.

I was thinking of this and how it applied to mobile marketing for music artists. Will it take a watershed event like the movement of a billion dollars for artists to move from "if you should be connecting with fans on mobile phones" to "how much should you be connecting with fans on mobile phones"? When will the value of mobile marketing be apparent to you?

We ask ourselves about value here at Adva Mobile all the time, especially about services that you, the artist, find valuable enough to pay for. The text messages we send out to fans, in particular, cost us, but reaching fans on their phones - that's valuable. Some of you are building large fan clubs so we'll need to begin to charge for those. Other services, like location targeted text alerts, also provide a valuable service to you that we believe you'll pay for. As your fans increasingly appreciate text messages and mobile web connection to you, you'll no longer ask if you should reach out to them on their phones, but how much.