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.

While reported elsewhere as somehow entirely new and novel, Men’s Health will follow HFMUS and Maxim in making its pages interactive via mobile technology. Using provider SnapTell, readers will be able to send phone cam images of the ads into a database that recognizes the page and sends back additional information. Several years ago, ElleGirl and other HFMUS magazines started a similar program with Mobot. Last year Maxim had a “mobile” issue with SMS short code prompts next to articles and ads. The return channel of SMS response to the photo snap can link to any manner of WAP site, coupons, videos, etc. For advertisers that value add is that it calls greater attention to the ad creative itself and extends the relationship with the user. It is unclear how the magazine will cue readers to taking the snap, how involved the instructions will be for use, and whether users will have to email the image to specific address or use a downloadable application to send in the pic. All of these elements have been barriers in the past to getting good performance from this approach.

According to comScore’s new Wireless Report a majority of mobile Web users access the Internet in some way via their phones each day. More than a third of Mobile Web users access the data platform multiple times a day, double the number just six months ago. Still, the cost of service and data plans now has become the foremost consideration among user switching or upgrading their mobile contracts. For publishers this price sensitivity all points to an ad supported mobile Web model. The appeal of fee-based added services and downloadable applications is limited and probably shrinking fast. As users migrate to a mobile Web so will their expectations of seeing there the same business models they have enjoyed for years online.

Leveraging its leadership in the mobile Web space, with over 6 million monthly uniques, The Weather Channel Interactive (www.weather.com) will introduce mobile video ads to its inventory. The site already offers mobile video for compatible handsets, and these ads will include a banner on the video index page, a five-second pre-roll and a 15-second post-roll. Media buyers will be able to sponsor the entire section in its initial stages and eventually be able to buy the mobile units as part of a larger bundle on Weather.com and the TV properties. The Weather Channel recently held a 2008 Upfront where it rolled out an aggressive program of ad products across its platforms and report record sales for 2007. The company has been in the mobile content business since 1999 and is one of the medium’s biggest players.

Anyone hoping to see new native iPhone apps this month was sorely disappointed by Apple’s bait and switch last week. The company rolled out its long-promised Software Development Kit, which is both late and still in beta. This means that the iPhone 2.0 software that will support third party mobile content won’t see the light of day until late June. Apple promised that developers would be able to make apps that link into key features of the iPhone, like mapping, geo-location, video and music players, WiFi, address books, etc. Publishers will need to go through Apple and the on-phone or iTunes store to distribute, so Apple is going to have some gatekeeper function. Actually, in what may be another slap at the usurious revenue sharing exacted by carriers on content, third parties in the iPhone app store will be able to set their own price for these programs and keep 70% of the revenues. That alone could prove to be a major incentive for all media companies to develop for the iPhone and thumb their nose at the current carrier model.

In a controversial set of reports and posts last week, a research attached to the 3G trade association, GSMA pegged the value of the mobile media platform at $250 billion by 2010. Blogger fuses blew up everywhere, but it was unclear whether the initial analyst from STL was misunderstood. Whatever. It underscores the point that mobile marketing spend is projected all over the map, as mocoNews’ Tricia Duryea rightly points out. Why hasn’t mobile learned the lesson of the early Web and enforced a little self discipline? When was the last time a journalist reporting on these ridiculous estimates of mobile media spending asked the simple question, “how do you figure?” Are these research companies actually speaking directly with mobile marketing companies about the level of revenues they are seeing or the actual spending patterns among media buyers? Are they presuming hockey stick pick up of mobile media that in fact is not occurring in the U.S. market? Are they anticipating budget shifts to mobile that have no precedent…ever? What we need is a central organization like the Mobile Marketing Association to perform the same quasi-official market sizing duties the IAB currently performs. The MMA should leverage its connections throughout the content and marketing value chain to issue reasonable estimates of current spending so that projections have some sane starting point.