Eli Portnoy wrote a great article in TechCrunch recently discussing the possibilities for advertisers to attract and target mobile audiences. This post followed on the heels of KPCB Partner Mary Meeker’s great presentation on the state of the web and the move towards mobile recently.

I wanted to cover some thoughts on mobile monetization, specifically from the publisher’s perspective. Eli’s comments are focused obviously on the advertiser: they recognize the power and potential that mobile can have especially given the inherent segmentation and localization that only mobile can provide at the moment (read: segmenting an ad message to a user based on where they are, what they checked in to, what time of day it is, etc.)

The issue at hand isn’t necessarily on the demand side as savvy advertisers are already launching some very successful mobile campaigns that take advantage of the segmentation capabilities inherent with mobile. The real issue in finding enough publishers at scale to make the campaigns worthwhile. And even more specific, finding a single outlet on the supply side that can truly provide reach for a campaign.

Many publishers are still working on optimizing for mobile as they are still slow to update their sites for the mobile interface. In this regard, many publishers can’t service mobile campaigns since the scale to serve enough impressions is lacking. You now have a problem in the market where the supply of ad inventory falls way below the demand; simple economics would dictate that the publisher would stand to benefit from such a market imbalance but unfortunately mobile CPM prices are still way below their true potential.

How do publishers stand to gain? Eyeballs are moving to mobile: a recent statistic pointed out that almost 50% of individuals in the US now have a smartphone. Given this, no publisher should be asking whether or not to focus on mobile, but rather, whether or not they should pursue a specific mobile strategy over another. Since many medium-tier publishers don’t necessarily have the scale to service a large branded advertiser’s campaign, it may be important for publishers to band together and provide a larger pool of available inventory. This would help the entire ecosystem by providing more revenue opportunities for publishers while giving advertisers the true scale they need to pull off their campaigns (further reinforcing the importance of mobile as a new medium to target audiences and therefore encouraging more ad spend and budget to flow into mobile).

For now, the real key for a publisher is to ensure that they are mobile-ready. Advertisers will notice and monetization opportunities should increase.