Mobile Movement

Ad budgets moving to mobile? A mobile movement?

If you’re a typical advertiser, chances are your share of spending in the mobile medium is around 1%. That should pretty much cover it, you figure.

Think again according to the Mobile Media Association. A study, conducted by Marketing Evolution, a leader in ROI measurement, concluded that the optimized spending level on mobile advertising should, on average, be seven percent (U.S. figures). That’s a dramatic shift, especially considering the Marketing Evolution predicts that numbers will increase to 10% by as early as 2016.

The study is believed to be the first empirically based examination of how marketers can adjust their marketing mix to achieve a higher return on their marketing dollars.

With PC sales flat, the only growth in the computer area is smartphones and tablets. It stands to reason that as more and more people go to their mobile devices for information and entertainment, this is the place advertisers want to be.

Yet marketers have largely ignored this trend. (Perhaps they’re too busy with their own smartphones), Download the MMA white paper, and it is evident that marketers are clearly missing opportunities, settling for less than they could achieve.

The white paper goes on to describe the “Mobile Revolution”, and serves up some startling statistics. For example, currently 37% of Americans and 14% of the global population use a smartphone; by 2016, those numbers will increase to 59% in the U.S. and 30% worldwide.

That’s hardly a niche market.

In fact, many companies now describe themselves as “mobile first”, such as the Weather Channel, Pandora and Facebook. But advertising creative departments are slow to adapt to the “small screen”. And obviously, it’s not just a matter of shrinking the ad to a phone screen proportion. It’s an entirely new medium.

If the medium is the message, it’s time advertisers get the message. Mobile is on the move.

Cam Levak, Raven5 Ltd., Toronto,  October 2012

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