Judging by conference agendas this year, mobile research has a significant share of attention. However, share of wallet tells a different story. For all its marketing oomph and promise to revolutionize how we collect data, mobile research represents a fraction of the total spend in marketing research today.

Nevertheless, we are already doing a lot of mobile research without trying. ''Survey takers'' are increasingly doing ''traditional'' web surveys on smartphones without ''premission.'' This should not be surprising. In much of the world, cell phones are the first, the easiest, and the cheapest way to read email, browse the web, and interact with the world via social media.