Fear of a Mobile Planet?

In the first of what is sure to be many articles in a similar vein,  media planner Ben Kunz writes at BusinessWeek Online about how mobile media threatens Google’s online revenue model. The smaller screen slows for fewer ads and less ability to monetize. If substantial shares of Web traffic move to handsets, this could spell trouble for the very digital models that media companies were hoping would save their dwindling offline businesses. Well, not likely. TV didn’t kill movies and the Web didn’t kill print, and it is likely that profitable models will be found to exploit mobile. The Eyeball’s take is that mobile gives media brands the opportunity to recapture lost users. His nibs is rediscovering Time, CBS, USAToday, and Car and Driver precisely because their mobile extensions stand out and advertise their core value propositions so well. The real economics of mobile for most media brands should be how this platform helps engage the user across all other platforms, how it can be one arc in the loop of TV/Print,Web, email, SMS and WAP.