The rise and rise of the mobile phone can hardly have gone unnoticed in recent times. And as part of that, we have seen the rise and rise of advertising on all our devices be that by email, sms, banner ad, native ad, videos, skyscrapers and more. Alongside the rise in media and advertising on digital, we have also seen the rise of ad blockers, millions and millions of dollars invested in ad networks on mobile, the advent of programmatic advertising (now leaking into TV) and more and more data collected about us and shared to all who will pay for it. Add in a healthy dose of social media and social selling, an avalanche of click fraud and a dollop of mobile apps (and the monetisation requirements for those) and we appear to have created a murky and complex scenario.

So much of our economy is based on advertising yet more and more consumers are turned off by it. Ad networks get sold to Google (Admob - $650m) or go for IPO (like Millennial Media) for multi-million dollar amounts and make their founders and shareholders very wealthy. On the one hand, some media owners claim it is theft to use an adblocker, others are blocking consumers who use one. Pay walls come in and out of fashion with varying degrees of success. Mobile games companies are forcing people to watch video ads to collect extra game points or to enter the next game level. And what about all the data floating around -allegedly it's anonymous and unidentifiable but is it? Meanwhile Facebook sponsored pages are cleaning up. And programmatic advertising is set to take over the world and in doing so is also driving what content we see and in turn that can impact on our opinions and emotions. That's a lot of power in an algorithm and the people who write them.

What has happened to the creative process in advertising that we so cherished and enjoyed in the early TV advertising days? Will we ever have a water-cooler moment about a banner ad? When was the last time you clicked on an ad anyway? And why are we still reliant on the banner ad to drive these advertising dollars?

Come and enjoy a big conversation, facilitated by Lloyd Davis and Helen Keegan, about whatever aspects of this change most puzzle, enthuse, or irritate you, answering the question “What does the future of mobile advertising look like?”

This session will lead on to a series of discussions along this theme that we're holding in London later on in November. You can find out about and register for those here.

Our discussions will be held under open space conditions. This is an informal approach to let to choose what aspect of the future of advertising you want to talk about. Anyone in the room can suggest a topic area to cover, a more specific area of interest or perhaps to ask a question of others. The only rule is the law of mobility, which says that if you're not getting anything out of the conversation you are in, you're very welcome to move on somewhere else. We think you'll find this a very productive way to get to grips with a topic like this. 

A big thank you to aql for hosting and sponsoring this session. Light refreshments will be provided.

Timing: Doors will open at 3pm for a 3.30pm start. We'll continue for about 2 hours.

About Lloyd Davis

Lloyd Davis is a social artist and master community builder. He has been blogging and podcasting since 2004. With a diverse background that includes theatre, information management and public service regulation he has acquired a unique, in-depth and practical understanding of the social web and building rich relationships online and off-. Having founded London’s highly influential Tuttle Club which regularly attracts the UK’s brightest social media thinkers and doers, Lloyd writes, speaks and consults about these uses of social technology. Recent work includes Social Artist in Residence at the University of London’s Centre for Creative Collaboration; We Will Gather – a web service for organising good things in local communities; and #hackthebarbican – a month-long cultural intervention at London’s Barbican Centre.

Read Lloyd's blog, follow him on Twitter - @lloyddavis and Instagram. Come to Tuttle.

About Helen Keegan

Helen Keegan is a retail and marcomms professional with over 25 years’ business experience under her belt. Helen has specialised in mobile for the last 14 years and was at the birth of mobile marketing in 2000 as Head of Customer Experience at ZagMe, the location-based mobile marketing pioneer. Helen specialises in mobile strategy with a particular focus on marketing, advertising and media. She works on a wide variety of projects including developing mobile strategies, analysing trends, creating products and services, and implementing initiatives for a wide variety of clients including NewsCorp, Vodafone, Dagen, UBM, Egmont, Monotype and LV to name but a few. Helen also advises mobile start-ups on their business strategy and marketing efforts, helps mobile network operators and handset manufacturers with their developer relations programmes, and works with media companies, retailers and brands on their mobile strategies and implementation.

Beyond her consulting activities, Helen keeps busy running events and initiatives in the mobile and media sectors including the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival in Barcelona since 2012, Vodafone Mobile Clicks Awards and the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards. She runs the popular mobile networking event, Swedish Beers  (http://www.swedishbeers.org) in London, Barcelona and beyond and is co-founder of Hacklands Festival.

Helen is a published writer and is invited to speak at many conferences and events both in the UK and abroad. She is a regular judge for various prestigious mobile awards. She has a blog about mobile marketing at http://www.technokitten.com and tweets at http://twitter.com/technokitten.

This is a Heroes of Mobile event supported by aql and Inspiring Interns.