Is it going to save the publishing industry? Etc.
Mobile advertising was the subject of this afternoon's debate at the M-Publishing conference in London, exploring what impact it will have for newspaper and magazine publishers.
It kicked off with recommendations on how mobile publishers should be selling their ad inventories.
Gary Danks offered the ad network's perspective, saying that smaller media owners won't have dedicated sales teams with the knowledge to make the most of mobile ads.
"A sales network receive the larger mobile budgets that have been planned," he said.
Meanwhile, Tim Taylor from Sky said that media owners who already have a media sales team should sell their space themselves, but if not, "networks make very good sense - you don't want to start in a sector where you don't have experience and expertise".
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Sky sells its mobile ad-space in-house. "We have approximately 100 sales people going out the door day-in day-out. If I can get them to pitch once a month for mobile... suddenly we've got a lot more touchpoints. We have these relationships that the general mobile industry doesn't already have."
One point raised was that mobile is coming into line with other platforms, with tools like third-party ad serving that media buyers expect to have available.
"Third party ad tracking is vital," said Ben Tatton-Brown of RingRing Media. "You need to be provided with the data to back the [buying] decision up. You'll find that mobile does actually work: we're halving cost per acquisitions for some clients."
The panel also gave their advice to publishers looking to make the most of mobile. "Don't run before you walk," said Danks, referring to "fancy" ad formats.
Tatton-Brown said that publishers should choose the right partner in terms of a sales house, and also suggested "look to fill your remnant inventory: there's always traffic there you're not going to fill, but there are solutions out there to help you."
Sky's Taylor warned of publishers not spending enough on mobile advertising to promote their mobile apps, highlighting the example of one "major UK high-street bank" that spent £50,000 on mobile ads for its iPhone app, and more than £250,000 on traditional advertising.
"They didn't even know if those people had an iPhone!" he said.
