By Thom Kennon

The question that?s put out to the agency world is: How can you profit from mobile marketing? Apps!

Say it with me: Apps! It feels oddly complete, perfectly succinct, almost yummy and somehow personable:  Apps!

Credit Apple for teaching consumers to say a word that no one would have guessed just a year or two ago we?d hear regular people chatting about over their watercoolers ? in offices and coffee rooms well beyond tech startups and geeked-out digital agencies.

Now, every mobile carrier and OEM worth their ringtones, along with a host of independent platform publishers, has a mobile app store.  

Developers ? from big well-funded tech shops to young hackers in their parents basement ? are falling all over themselves to get their apps in front of the growing line of customers ready and eager to download, try and share them.

As customers of Nokia, Samsung, LG and other devices are fast finding out, you don?t need a $400 smartphone to enjoy your fair share of the magic of apps.

Apps the new widget
I started to think of mobile apps as the next generation of online widgets.  Both are designed to perform a very specific function.   

Some are very simple and singular providing things like weather, sports or stock updates. 

Others are more rich and engaging, things like music and picture sharing apps, social meet-up planners or remote video feeders from your mobile phone.

But here?s the difference:  widgets, mostly, are interesting things that we may or may not spend much time with once we play around with them bit.  This lack of stickiness and sharability tends to make them fairly disposable.

But apps - mobile apps ? have got almost everybody primed, eager or already busy downloading, saving, using and sharing apps on their phones. 

What?s a brand to do?
So we have a channel (mobile) with near universal penetration in a market like North America. 

We have a rapid proliferation of devices (feature and smart phones) streaming into that channel which are apps-ready.  

We have a user population locked, loaded and ready to consume a wealth of brand new shiny things they can do on those devices beyond texting and talking.

And let?s not forget we still have that nagging issue about how to monetize the channel.
Enter apps. 

Lots of apps.  Apps that can do almost anything ? anywhere, anytime, increasingly, for almost everyone.

So if you are a marketer, a brand, an operator or device manufacturer, a developer or a publisher you better be asking yourself a simple question:  What?s my apps strategy?

Apps as media
If you need to drive consideration, clicks and engagement through mobile, it?s not a bad idea to think about starting the consumer journey on the web. 

Call it ?drive to mobile."  Mobile apps are great ways to trigger this journey. 

If you?re an advertiser, one way to promote your product or service is sponsoring a sticky mobile app that people will be downloading, sharing and buzzing about.

If you?re a publisher, you?ve likely got web properties to house and launch these apps as ad units on the Web, driving calls-to-action to on WAP sites within and across your networks and domains.

If you?re a carrier or OEM, you might be focusing on three simple letters ? ?OTA." 

Directly from their handsets engaged users can download your apps ?over the air? with near frictionless abandon.

If you?re a developer, you?re probably already building ?lite? versions of your awesome apps portable, offering them? FREE! ? as teaser intros to your premium apps and services.

And if you?re an agency working for a brand, apps offer a whole new currency of media value.

They can amplify, or, maybe replace, the more traditional investment in digital media by launching these little satellites of feature-rich value into the hearts and handsets, purses and pockets of targeted consumers.

Where social meets mobile
Apps aren?t just portable cross-platform pieces of functional wonder. 

They can serve as branded ambassadors into the viral realm of mobile social media.

Imagine you?re an agency representing a major hotel brand and you?re targeting the last minute impulse traveler, who likes a good deal to fuel their passion for, well, last minute travel.

You?re already advertising on places like LastMinute Travel, Travelocity and other travel sites, and so you decide to create a mobile travel app.  

Your app might allow users to customize it around their favorite cities, food passions, methods of travel, vacation schedules and price point ranges. 

You launch this little app within a rich media buy ? both on the Web and across targeted mobile sites ? inviting users to pop it out of the ad unit and download it to their mobile phones. 

And then you make it social. 

Included in your app are Twitter feeds from your hotel brand with links to tailored alerts, offers and deals are all pushed selectively to each user into their mobile app.  

Crucially, recipients can retweet or text-forward the offers to friends: ?Wanna go to Vancouver with me this weekend??

There?s clearly a vast and fertile territory for us all to explore across the evolving mobile ecosystem.  

Mobile apps have the potential for unleashing myriad new and targeted ways we can find, engage and stay in touch with our customers, wherever they may be. 

Apps ? say it with me!  It could be a critical key in how we collectively monetize the mobile channel.

Thom Kennon is vice president of strategy at relationship marketing agency Wunderman New York. Reach him at .