Chetan Sharma writes a contrarian view to some analysts recent market size projections. I agree with his general position and offered a few comments, to which I am extending here.

In my comments to Chetan, I mentioned that mobile technology appears to provide some really advantages vs. web when it comes to interaction, but mobile behavior models introduce additional complexities.

I don’t think I am offering anything new when I say that mobile offers great advantages when it comes to segmentation and targeting. There are few, if any, consumer electronic devices as personalized as the mobile phone. Mobile phones are with the consumer everywhere they go, and as such advertising can be targeted based on traditional demographic data as well as location. Mobile phones support push messaging, for sponsor-originated advertising, as well as short codes, barcodes, and scancodes, for consumer-originated.

Not all of this is as easy as a start-up’s ten slides might indicate. Operator’s subscriber data is scattered across a bunch of different systems, privacy is lurking behind every corner, behavioral targeting is relatively unexplored (what does the subscriber actually use), and location data is not technically easy to access for direct-to-consumer (D2C) services. But, regardless, its possible and I am comfortable that it will become reality.

What is more challenging is the mobile subscriber’s behavior model.

With television, consumers are in a lean-back mode and are generally passive acceptors/receptors of in-band advertising. TiVo and their ilk have done wonders to move consumers to more lean-forward mode, but studies have shown a great many consumers watch the first commercial in a set before hitting the fast-forward.

With PCs, consumers are in a lean-forward mode and are generally interacting with the screen. With the exception of “search”, most advertising is not inline with the consumers current task. But the consumer has a very powerful tool to handle relevant advertising that is interrupting their task — right menu click open link in new tab. Basically, the consumer can “come back” to the advertisement at a later time.

In mobile, Google astutely rationalized subscribers into three models: repetitive now, bored now, and urgent now (see my previous post on this subject). In two of these models, the subscriber is in a highly focused task-oriented mode of operation. Non-destination advertising is clearly “in the way” of the task and there is no way of coming back for the advertisement at a later time.

My hope is that mobile advertising enablers will recognize this behavior and build appropriate tools for the consumer that lets them manage relevant advertisements. Otherwise, I expect CPMs to quickly drop when the ineffectiveness of mobile advertising is recognized.