The UK continues to be a test bed for mobile marketing thanks to the presence of four major mobile operators (Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and Telefonica) and a mature market. Mobile operators are wise to join their efforts as advertisers are less interested in the user's mobile operator than the traditional targeting characteristics (age, gender, location...).

In a market where Google's Android is becoming the leading driver in mobile advertising, operators appear to lag behind on a turf that used to be theirs for the taking, thanks to their extensive data trove. Privacy considerations and slow execution relegated operators to glorified publishers thanks to their portal presence, but not much more.

This challenger position, coupled with Google's leadership means that operators feel they do not need the GSMA to act as some sort of "competitive chaperone", as they did back in 2010. This time, operators appear more willing to directly extract ad value from their user base, and the context appears favourable from a competition point of view.

The key challenge, as always, will be the speed of execution. Operators have been very slow to move on their own and the extra layer of trans-operator consensus could prove inefficient in the long run. 

The 2010 UK mobile ad spend was estimated at around £83m (up 116% from 2009) by IAB UK. IHS Screen Digest expects UK mobile ad spend to top £600m by 2015.