Mobile commerce is exploding, and is expected to reach $1 trillion in the U.S. alone within the next decade, from around $100 billion today.

Seeing that opportunity, companies with mobile apps are trying to ride that wave early and stake out their share of the growing pie. For some companies, the goal is to make consumers purchase goods through an app. For others, their content is free, but they make money through advertising.

And for still others, the model is selling a subscription. Or it could be a mix of these.

What are the lessons we can learn from leading apps around the magic of monetization? That's what we're discussing at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit next week in Sausalito, in one of our deep-dive conversations with experts.

Chairs of the discussion include Josh Shaeffer, VP of business development at fitness app maker Runtastic, and Jerry Hum, CEO of men's ecommerce company Touch of Modern.

Runtastic, acquired by Adidas last year for $240 million, offers more than 20 fitness, health, and endurance apps, and boasts more than 140 million downloads. It mixes advertising with subscriptions, but is moving more aggressively toward the subscription model because of the reliable, recurring revenue that brings the company.

However, to pull off a subscription strategy, companies like Runtastic need to make sure they offer an engaging experience, and one that is constantly upgraded so that users can justify their repeated subscription spend. For Runtastic, that may mean providing new training workouts, for example, or partnering with food companies to give users discounts.

Jerry Hum, CEO of Touch of Modern, will talk about how that ecommerce company pursues a growth strategy through Facebook distribution and smart notification.

VB Insight analyst Stewart Rogers will facilitate the conversation.

Learn more about monetization strategies at the Summit, where our boardroom sessions offer smart exchanges between senior marketers and product and engineering executives. Other speakers at Mobile Summit include leading executives from Amazon, Pinterest, Lyft, Pandora, GrubHub, Google, LinkedIn, Zynga, Pocket Gems, and AOL. And there's a surprise guest we can't talk about just yet.

VB Mobile Summit: How to acquire fast and engage long

We invite only 180 executives to the Summit (you can apply to attend here). It's designed to be an intimate experience where top people in the field exchange strategies around some of the hottest trends in mobile -- at a time when brands are having to move quickly to embrace instantaneous distribution. The goal is to make the Summit the best insider event, which is why it's also free of influence from specific vendors or platform owners.

Leading vendors will be there, of course, but we prioritize brands and other independent app owners to create the best mix possible.

Working sessions go into depth on specific topic areas, and cocktail receptions make sure the networking juices flow.

Topics include the following:

  • User acquisition
  • Designing the user experience
  • Messaging and video
  • Mobile marketing automation
  • Targeted marketing
  • How to build your mobile marketing team
  • How to orient an entire organization around mobile
  • M-commerce and online-offline convergence
  • Nurturing existing users
  • Harnessing data for mobile engagement
  • Mobile advertising attribution
  • Predicting and measuring