It seems marketers are getting rather excited at the launch of a new mobile measurement system. Today saw the launch by GSMA and ComScore of what (according to research) nearly 60% of marketers have been waiting for before opening their purses.

This love of metrics is a curious thing and goes back to the dark ages of marketing where ‘if you can’t measure it it is no use’. I remember evangelizing for Internet marketing back in the early 90s, when the constant criticism was, “We wouldn’t know who is looking at our site – probably some 13 year old kid in Uzbekistan”. Then new media became the most measurable medium with more stats and measurements available than the most statistically driven marketer could shake a spreadsheet at. In tight fiscal times it is no wonder that calculation of ROI became the name of the game.

Now it is the turn of mobile media – and I for one am pleased that this is getting some direction. Mobile media has been sniffing around the door for a long time now. I’m sure that measurement is the key to letting it in and we will all see what dimensions have real value.

Marketers will be knocking on clients’ doors with fistfulls of stats and persuasive arguments… just remember the old saying though; “You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it”.

Once upon a time there were just websites, then blogs came along. Social internet drove the blog revolution and much of it in turn drove traffic to websites. Then blogs became integrated in websites and blogs added widgets and plug-ins and started to take on all the functionality of websites. Developers soon realised that blogging software like Wordpress was ideal for building CMS based websites.

So, does it make sense now to have both a website and a blog or is it time to converge them? There are cases for both approaches: blogs appear more ‘independent’ and can be upfront with stories where websites have other jobs to do. Websites have strategic purposes, maybe for e-commerce or to generate enquiries so the blog may have to take second place. But websites have always had ‘news’ sections that keep the site fresh and alive – and what better way to handle news than with a blog?

However it goes… and there is no one-size-fits-all solution (on in a digital world there is little need for one)… the borders between blogs and websites are already blurred.

New year is always a time for predictions and I’ve been looking through the crop on various blogs and in trade magazines, and, not to be outdone, here are the three things that ring bells for me.

Visual internet

The web will continue to get more and more visual. Sure, it will still be a text based medium at heart, but but more broadband has brought us more images, animations, Flash and of course video (okay, for ‘visual’ read ‘audio visual’). The boundaries of possibilities for marketers are expanding with increasing rapidity. The facebook/youtube generation is driving communications and conversations.
While we live in very exciting times I do have some worries, with my accessibility hat on, as we move away from text and hope everyone keeps in mind users with disabilities.

Mobile

There is little doubt that mobile is going to be very big in 2010, as it has been threatening for some time, but in what shape we still have to wait and see. It is a slippery concept – just when you think you have got your hand on it it moves on. Undoubtedly mobile apps fuelled by the iPhone and Google are driving one end with social internet revving up the other. Watch out for more mobile blogging.

Electronic PR

ePR has been galloping away in a quiet revolution and has already become a powerful and cost effective tool. Those who thought of it as just an electronic delivery system have had to think again. Social internet is still a bit of a wild child, but the borders between Web 2.0, online publishing, PR and web-promotion are becoming increasingly blurred and I suggest that in 2010 we will see agencies emerging offering a radically new type of service. While budgets continue to be squeezed, savvy communicators will be looking to ePR.