Brands such as Procter & Gamble, Panasonic, Best Buy and Sony have turned to mobile advertising to directly target their demographics, ensuring a more cost-effective means to advertising this year.

Mobile advertising provides a lower CPM than traditional media and has seen an increase in click-through rates for increased sales. As the year comes to a close with the holiday buying season, and advertisers across the country watch their bottom line, big brands look for innovative solutions.

Mobile Marketer's Giselle Abramovich interviewed Steven Rosenblatt, vice president of ad sales for Quattro Wireless, Waltham, MA. Here is his outlook on mobile advertising.

Can you talk in detail about some big advertisers' campaigns that have really impressed you this year?
There are several campaigns that have been incredibly impressive. Quattro Wireless ran a campaign for Unilever's Dove brand earlier this year.

It was an incredibly smart campaign, leveraging their partnership with MTV and the assets they had with Alicia Keys. Quattro ran a targeted media campaign to drive young females to an experience that featured videos, tune-in alerts, product information, and a viral send-a-friend.

The brand understood how mobile advertising and a mobile experience played in the overall communication strategy and utilized the mobile channel as a great way to engage their consumer base.

I further believe one of the savviest marketers in mobile is Procter & Gamble. It really understands how to create the right experience for its brands and has used a mix of utility, content partners, and direct call to actions to drive great experiences for CoverGirl, Herbal Essences and Always.

What trends did you see in mobile advertising in 2008?
We finally can say that mobile advertising is truly here and that "this is the year." 2008 was the groundbreaking year where brands from all sectors got into the space and realized that there is a mass audience and mobile does work.

Consumers love their devices and are using them to consume a wide variety of content. Thank you to Steve Jobs for raising the awareness about how the mobile device is used for consumer entertainment, and now advertisers desire to be where consumers like free content.

Retailers and significant brands, such as Panasonic, Best Buy, Sony, Slingbox and others turned to mobile advertising to directly target their demographics, ensuring a more cost-effective means to advertising this year.

Mobile advertising provides a lower CPM than traditional media and has seen an increase in click-through rates for increased sales.

What trends do you expect to see in 2009?
2009 will see continued growth. We will see budgets increase significantly, more brands coming into the space, and we will see the continued handset wars lead to consumers upgrading to new devices that act as miniature PC's. We will also see the infrastructure issue improve and it will be much easier for agencies to buy mobile advertising.

What were some challenges in mobile advertising for 2008?
Limited research, device complication, and bringing advertisers up-to-speed on the differences between mobile and online programs. There are some great things you can do in mobile that you can't do in other mediums and marketers should embrace those features.

What do you think some challenges will be in 2009?
At Quattro Wireless, we are making sure that research continues to mature and the mobile infrastructure gets simplified. We'd like to see more brands create mobile experiences, with more publishers moving their content into an adapted mobile format.

Consumers follow content. So, once the content is available and advertisers have quality sites to leverage, combined with great research, you will see this industry take off fast.

Quattro is helping reach large targeted audiences who are passionate about great content such as NFL, CBS News, TMZ, College Humor, Playboy, ELLE, Car and Driver, and so many more.

Can you talk about the economy and how mobile will be affected?
Mobile will take off because of this prolonged recession. This economy will force people to move away from land lines, cut back on their cable and DSL costs, but not give up their cell phones.

Consumers all around the world will take advantage of the next great handsets that are coming out and we will see consumers in the U.S. realize that the mobile device can help them email, entertain, get weather, news, sports, health, cooking and so much more that it will change their lives.

And, if you don't think Apple is cooking up the next great evolution of the iPhone, than clearly you haven't followed Steve Jobs' career. The threat of that will force the likes of Research In Motion, Nokia, LG, HTC and all of the handset manufacturers to build highly sophisticated mobile phones.

Get ready for the ride, because it is going to be an exciting one.