I think the most substantive takeaway from the recent Mary Meeker presentation on Internet Trends is that mobile monetization is a huge opportunity (in share of consumer media consumption) and is incredibly nascent. One perspective is that such a gap means mobile advertising will be huge.

That being said, I still have yet to see a decent mobile advertisement that didn't jar me as a user.

What are the substantive challenges that you see in the mobile space from a user experience perspective or from an industry perspective?

That's the natural curve of advertising; the v1s always suck, and it takes a while for the industry to fully leverage what the host platform can offer. The first banners on the web were awful.

But that doesn't mean it won't be jarring when it arrives; advertisers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars jarring users, and they'll continue to do so :)

I totally agree, though what strikes me about mobile is that from a user experience point of view, there's literally no physical room for an awful ad.

So while websites and the online advertising ecosystem were able to suck, but progress by at least getting the room to have a banner ad, it seems like there won't be that opportunity on mobile because a good mobile developer realizes how small the real estate is and how bad using up a significant fraction of it for a crappy ad will look.

But then again, maybe that was always the case with the early web too. I was in junior high, so can't really recall. :)

I don't want to sound naive, but I'm not sure what "awesome" will mean in this context. The path that the feed based platforms are moving (Twitter, Tumblr) feels right - short, contextual, relevant content that I can then dive into if desired.

Agree 100% with the idea that a huge % of ad dollars will move over to mobile, inevitably following the engagement & targeting possible there. Feels like my brand relationship with Starbucks is a lot stronger b/c of their mobile app.