Q&A:Bango's Anil Malhotra

Social networking, advertising and location-based services are among the biggest applications migrating to mobile handsets. The potential for additional revenue streams is definitely significant, but if mobile carriers can't measure their services' traffic, the mobile push could go unnoticed. Enter Bango. Last week the mobile content company released Bango Analytics, a product to deliver Web stats on how people interact with mobile Web sites and which marketing campaigns are most effective. Bango co-founder Anil Malhotra spoke with Telephony Associate Editor Sarah Reedy about why this product will be the catalyst to a mobile marketing revolution.

On why mobile is hot right now: A lot of the mainstream brands and bigger advertisers currently in the PC online marketing space are starting to create a mobile presence — newspapers, hotel chains, automobile manufacturers, airlines and so forth. At some point in the last 12 months, all those created a clear purpose for a mobile Web presence to complement their PC Web presence. We are seeing, therefore, an expansion of the mobile marketplace away from the founding services that drove the initial growth in mobile data. Also, very substantial businesses that make a living selling online advertising and marketing to these brands are currently investing in producing parallel mobile and marketing solutions.

On why Google approaches the problem the lazy way: If you happen to be one of these people who believes it's inevitable and it is only a matter of time before Google dominates mobile marketing, the fact of the matter is they don't now and they won't for the foreseeable future. … They can give a certain amount of information about the traffic you generate through their marketing channels, but what they can't give you is an independent, impartial [analysis] across all the venues you are in. … The basic technology that is used to track visitors at a PC Web site and analyze where they are coming from and going to does not work in a mobile environment.

On how information can equal revenue: If it's Reuters advertising business information, I am going to be more interested in people with things like BlackBerrys and Windows devices. I'm not probably going to be interested so much with people with pink RAZR phones. On the other hand, if I am selling hip-hop ringtones or sports scores, phone type might tell me something about the user I'm after. … The total return across any campaign is something any advertiser or, for that matter, anybody that has a mobile Web site is going to be interested in.