Mr Richard Seyler Ling, Sociologist and Senior researcher, Telenor Research & Development, Norway talked about the new way we use mobile phones and how this opens up a new market for mobile advertisement at The Annual Digital Media Round Table, a session of the 61st World Newspaper Congress.

Over 90% of the Europeans have a mobile subscription. But more and more people in the developing world are using it. According to Richard Seyler Sing the developing world is on the move and that is where it happens!
 
Men talk longer than women but on the other hand it's teen girls who text message the most - up to 15-20 texts per day. As the girls get older the number of texts drop. So it's a teen thing!

Richard Seyler Ling has studied the social consequences of mobile phone usage. In the developing world it's a matter of basic connectivity. It makes a larger number of people able to use a phone than a landline ever did.

Mobile phones also change the way we look at telephone calls: now we call a person, not a place. It's individual addressability. Parents give mobile phones to their children so they can be accessible.

The young people of today have access to their friends in a way older generations never had. According to Richard Seyler Ling mobile phones generate social cohesion. It's the first technical device to do that.

Social rituals are holding people together, and mobile phones is no different. Our mobile usage create new social rituals. Although face to face communication is the number one thing to hold together social ties, mobile voice is in second place.

The industry of mobile advertising is still in its infancy. The money spent on that kind of commercial is still peanuts compared to the more traditional ways. But Infoma Telecoms and Media predicts the market for mobile ads will be 11.4 billion by 2011.That means in just over three years time the mobile ads market will grow fast!

There are different ways of mobile ads, for example:
-Push based text messages
-Click through web ads
-Ads for services (Get X free minutes on the internet if you look at this ad)

But the key is to make it not look like spam. For people to accept it it has to look like information - a good thing for the news business!

So far there are not many web capable mobile phones. But if you are to believe Richard Seyler Ling the market is out there.