I believe brands will allocate larger portions of their digital media plan towards mobile to further capitalize on the most personal marketing medium out there in 2010.

“Augmented reality, applications and rich-media ads will likely be areas of focus in the new year.” Soler explains. “I believe that mobile Web and application advertising will still be the focus in 2010 and will have most of the attention of marketers next year.”

Here are some of the trends that industry experts forecast in 2010:

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality will likely gain traction in 2010, but will remain a bell and whistle compared to list and map-view.

hypnoticmedia believes that 2010 will be the year that this exciting technology begins to be adopted on mobile phones.

Augmented reality is the ability to merge a view of the physical world with enhanced data or imagery that is computer generated – thereby providing a richer view of the real world.

Using the GPS, the camera and even the compass, your smartphone can sense what you are pointing at and show relevant data for that place, such as reviews for a restaurant or virtual signposts to direct you to a place.

Expect to see retailers and entertainment companies trying out ways of showcasing their brands with this niche, but exciting new technology. Although augmented reality will appear in more applications, consumers will still prefer the list and map versions to search results on a usage basis.

Mobile Metrics

Very often, mobile industry executives will say that the marketing potential of mobile reminds them of the early Internet days because of this similarity with the web some of these mobile executives will break out boilerplate Internet metrics to measure marketing success in the mobile space. They will apply Internet-centric marketing metrics such as page views, unique visitors, time spent on a site, cost-per-thousand impressions, registered users, and even click-through of banner ads.

But I believe there is more to mobile marketing than banner ads.

In reality, mobile is not the next Internet. Mobile is its own animal, with new usage behavior, new business opportunities and new marketing potential.

To measure progress of mobile campaigns, mobile-specific measurement tools need to be applied. Standard Internet metrics do not apply to the mobile environment.

As mobile startups eye the market’s potential, they often envisions themselves as becoming the Google of the mobile space.

Perhaps there is another $10 billion per year in advertising revenue out there to be had in the mobile space? Not likely, but it’s no wonder every mobile startup dreams of becoming the next Google of mobile.

More likely, there will be smaller, agile companies that create fantastic experiences and measurable ROI on mobile platforms.

Mobile marketing spending will be an extension of advertising campaigns, not a displacement of all Internet spending. Here are some of the hot mobile properties, specifically the mobile Web, the browser, commerce and search.
Mobile Web

The mobile browser war is mostly academic. This translates basically to old mobile browsers are bad and new mobile browsers are good.

Newer browsers such as the Opera Mini, Firefox mobile and Skyfire are better at handling complex Internet tasks and add desktop-like features to the mix, but the killer mobile app will not be the browser itself.

A desktop-like browser on a mobile device essentially treats the mobile device like a magnifying glass for the Internet. Users don’t want tiny view of a huge Web page. They want a mobile-specific experience. 

The best mobile experiences are more contextual to the phone itself, and include the easier entry point that StarStar offers, smoother integration of a small page layout, SMS, GPS and easily installed applications.

So, measuring page hits and stickiness of Web sites are really not useful metrics.
Instead, measuring data usage, numbers of videos streamed to mobile, or content shared to mobile, would be more useful to measuring mobile Internet engagement.

Mobile search

Search in mobile is not as simple as building a clean search site with the most relevant search results.

The search issue in mobile revolves around a simple user experience. This means less text entry and less scrolling than the desktop experience. Again StarStar is essential.

A more compelling mobile search experience will come from many forms of content discovery — social networks engagement, location-based-service applications and simply sending and receiving links via SMS or email.

Fundamentally finding, learning, and discovering content will involve much more than an extremely tiny mobile browser.Discovery of content will be custom-tailored to the mobile user’s device functionality, interface, applications and preferences.

Discovery of content could come from a friend’s message, from an application, an email, an RSS feed or from a Twitter micro blog.Traditional portals’ searches will still come in handy on mobile, certainly, but not as the primary behavior of the mobile user.

A better approach to measuring mobile search hits is to tally the activity engaged in mobile data applications, not just the number of times a search button is clicked.

Standalone search marketing in mobile is not a viable way to measure search engagement in mobile.Marketers will need to find new ways to calculate how their brands are being discovered and shared in the context of mobile discovery as well.

Internet and mobile: Opposite or alike?

Mobile users want to interact, search and download valuable and targeted content from the Internet, but not in the context of a desktop experience. They are “on-the-go” and need the information in the “context” of their daily lives.

The best mobile experiences will come from developers that create a simple, clean, Internet-rich, mobile-specific experience without trying to cram the desktop into a mobile phone.

Recently, the Internet has become rich with video. Web video has grown in popularity due to improved CDN technologies and broadband penetration.

There are approximately 15 billion videos on the Internet today. Video can quickly and easily be translated to mobile with powerful backend transcoding and streaming tools.

My friend Ian Byington sent this to me…it is an incredible example of viral marketing but it is also a warning to companies who pride themselves on customer service. The web can be a great ally or undo millions of dollars in PR and marketing.

A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for youtube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded : “Good luck with that one, pal”.

So he posted a retaliatory video on youtube. The video has since received over 6.0 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal”.

Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for the product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders.

Here’s the video called United Breaks Guitars.

In the waning weeks of 2009, planeloads of scientists, politicians, and assorted climate wonks from 192 countries will blow through a few million tons of CO2 to jet to Copenhagen, one of the world’s most carbon-conscious cities. The occasion is the much-awaited United Nations Climate Change Conference, aka Kyoto 2. Speeches will be made. Goals and targets will be hammered out. Limited victory will be declared. Set a Google News alert for “Last Chance to Stop Global Warming.”

There’s just one problem. As many of the participants—certainly the scientists—are only too aware, the global war on carbon has not gone well for the atmosphere. The really inconvenient truth: We’re toast. Fried. Steamed. Poached. More so than even many hand-wringing carbonistas admit. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, C02 that’s already in the air or in the pipeline will stoke “irreversible” warming for the next 1,000 years.

Any scheme cobbled together in Copenhagen for slowing—forget reversing—the growth of greenhouse gases will be way too little, way too late. In the apt jargon of industry, a hotter planet is already “baked in.” James Lovelock, the British chemist who redubbed Mother Earth as “Gaia,” tells the ungilded truth: Can we hit a carbon Undo button? “Not a hope in hell.”