I am always looking for how the campaigns are using mobile media... and found this quote on MyDD [4] talking about the Obama camp use of the medium at their recent big events:

"Now today, I read an account of Obama's South Carolina Oprah rally and was impressed by the further innovation of how the campaign is continuing to exploit his crowds. This strikes me as rather brilliant.

The campaign attempted to organize that enthusiasm by asking the crowd to text their cell phone numbers to the campaign. Jeremy Bird and Anton Gunn, the campaign's field and political directors took the stage to ask the crowd to text their phone numbers to Obama's campaign. They also broke a Guinness World Record by conducting the world's largest phone bank, 36,426 people in the audience called four names of South Carolinian voters listed on the back of their tickets and asked them to support Barack Obama.

Here, we see his campaign collecting supporters' cell phone numbers rather than e-mail addresses for more immediate access to them, and has taken the exploitation of the crowds as activists one step further by actually having them make calls right there."

A good NY Times story [9] that summarizes the latest information on cellphone only households in the US and how that will effect political polling perhaps as soon as next year:

A key quote:

"According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey, adults with cellphones and no land lines are more likely to be young — half of exclusively wireless users are younger than 30 — male, Hispanic, living in poverty, renting a residence and living in metropolitan regions.

The Pew Research Center conducted four studies last year on the differences between cellphone and land line respondents. The studies said the differences were not significant enough to influence surveys properly weighted to census data. With the increase in cellphone-only households, that may not be the case next year. Researchers, including the New York Times/CBS News poll will test that by incorporating cellphones in samples.

The estimates in the Health Interview Study suggest that cellphone-only households are steadily increasing.

“If the percentage of adults living in cell-only households continues to grow at the rate it has been growing for the past four years, I have projected that it will exceed 25 percent by the end of 2008,” Stephen J. Blumberg, a senior scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, wrote in an e-mail message."

Another media related study [13] was released today... this time on the next generation of Americans (and voters) on their use of mobile phones and their consumption of mobile media.

This is a Nielsen study on the "tweens" or 8 to 12 year olds. There should be a rule that once a technology reaches these numbers with 8 to 12 year olds, it's crossed a certain critical mass and can be officially deemed a "mass medium."

So for this wave, the report estimates that TODAY that:
* 35% of tweens own a mobile phone.
* 20% of tweens have used text messaging.
* 21% of tweens have used ring & answer tones.

 And it adds that "while text-messaging and ringtones remain the most pervasive non-voice functions on the phone, other content such as downloaded wallpapers, music, games and Internet access also rank highly among tweens."
Imagine how deep-rooted mobile media use will be for this generation when they begin voting in 6 years.

Signs of the times. AdAge [18] highlights a new survey on future advertising spending in the next several years.

A key forecast:

"We expect [online ad spend]  to overtake radio advertising in 2008; to attain a double-digit share of global advertising in 2009; and to overtake magazine advertising in 2010, with 11.5% of total ad spend."

It also lists that globally internet ad spending would grow to $44.6 billion from approximately $36 billion -  which would increase it's share of the market from  8.1 to 9.4 percent.

This last Tuesday Verizon outlined a new more open strategy to supporting "any application, any device" [23] that meets their minimum technology requirements on their network by 2008. This dramatic move also offers that "any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices. "

The Verizon Wireless President called this "a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth.”

With this new strategy, Verizon seems to be seeing that the benefits from being more open with their platform outweigh those of trying to maintain a more rigid, more controlled "closed garden" model.  

Some analysts believe that this move will broaden the number of "officially supported" devices on the Verizon network from what it is today (around  50 handsets) to somewhere more than 500 once developers have really begun taking advantage of this new offer.  I'd suspect that this would include many new devices that are not primarily voice based based, but that are pure data devices.

These new more broad pool of officially supported devices would then have to compete on offering a better consumer experience, and new and innovative features.

 And this speaks to an overall trend we've highlighted before on this blog about "smartphones" getting smarter... and continuing to grow into full fledged media devices.

This Reuters story [59] shows YouTube/Google’s strategy for mobile devices more clearly than anything I’d seen publicly before…They plan to have the full service mobilized by end of 2007. And folks thought viral video was a factor in this years election, just wait for 08:

“Chad Hurley, YouTube chief executive and co-founder, told an advertising conference that offering video services on mobile phones was a key opportunity for the company.

“Within the next year we hope to have something on a mobile device, it’s going to be a huge market, especially for the video mind-set we’re dealing with, it’s a natural transition,” said Hurley…

In May, YouTube launched its YouTube To Go service to enable users to upload clips directly from their mobile phones to view on the Web site on their personal computers.

Already many of the clips seen on YouTube are captured by users with their cellphones. A new mobile service could enable users to share videos with others in the YouTube community directly via their phones.”

In the final days of the campaign two new media efforts caught my eye...

Firstly, as much as viral video has been a part of various elections, I came across one implementation that would reward attention.

In the online video space in addition to YouTube and it's various clones, another there is a company called Brightcove [64]...I've been a fan of their solution for a while now...it is a commercial platform for ad supported or subscription commercial net delivered video content. This allows small or large businesses to stream their content to users over the Internet, but it also gives buisnesses nearly complete control over the user interface, branding, unlike services such as YouTube.

The first political effort I've seen using Brightcove solution is Deval Patrick in the Massachusets Governor's race...Check out Deval Patrick TV [65] to get a sense of what Brightcove enables, and what they did with it... Good stuff.

Secondly, in a season that saw the first nascent mobile efforts by folks like John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger's, Rick Santorum, etc...I've come across the best integrated mobile call to action in a traditional campaign commercial that I've seen yet. It's from the Coalition for Progress...Here it is... [66]