In what was largely a preaching-to-the-choir Mobile Marketing Association Forum held yesterday in Gurgaon, where the opportunity in mobile marketing was highlighted time and again with different versions of the "mobile is big" refrain (context), I noticed one statement in particular that felt a little odd: Arun Sharma, VP (Marketing) and Head of Media said, while responding to a question, that it would be great if someone could combine the database that Facebook has, with its demographic data, and telecom operators like Airtel have, with detailed behavioral information, and a third party network like a Vserv (he said) could use it. Aside of the fact that Facebook will not give its database to a third party, this was odd because if you think about it, telecom operators have demographic information for more Indians than a Facebook does - in fact, even Airtel alone with 181 million mobile connections possibly would have more than Facebook would. I pointed this out to Lloyd Mathias, founder of GreenBean Ventures, and previously the CMO for Tata Teleservices, and during the panel discussion that followed later in the evening, he said that the real challenge for a telecom operator is that this data isn't very accurate - and while from a marketing perspective, this is a golden opportunity, it's a challenge for marketer to clean up this data. There is, of course, also the issue of the do not disturb registry (and it's hard to believe Sharma's response that "all the top telcos" are not…
