Where is the mobile advertising market heading?

Mobile Advertising Market

Mobile advertising is closely related to online or internet advertising, just with a far greater reach.

Mobile phones, this includes the recent technology phenomenom that is the smartphone, are the primary target for a huge majority of mobile advertising and the hand held devices hit an estimated global total of 4.6 billion in 2009.

With global advertising looking to exploit this market more and more, it's time to start thinking about where mobile advertising is heading.

Generally, people would rather look at adverts next to content they don't have to pay for, and visa-versa people do not want to see adverts alongside content that they pay for.

But, as BSkyB's head of mobile advertising Tim Hussain points out, this argument doesn't exist in other mediums.

Online has historically been free content

In an interview with Adam Burns for MeetTheBoss.tv, Hussain insists that the idea that consumers won't pay for content and accept advertising is "not a proven model" in any other form of media.

The problem with the online medium is that it has historically been free content, meaning people are now institutionalized and unprepared to adjust to market changes.

The argument can now be more closely applied to the mobile advertising market as internet access on devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry becomes more widely available. The Kelsey Group, a market research firm, projects that the mobile advertising market will balloon from $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion in 2013.

Whereas this is unlikely to prove wholly accurate, there is no doubt that mobile advertising will be much bigger in four years, perhaps even ten to 20 times bigger than it is today.

Search emerges as the real winner

But as TechCrunch.com asks: Where will all of that mobile ad money go to?

Well the Kelsey Group projects that mobile search will go from 24 percent of the total mobile ad market last year to 73 percent of the much larger pie in 2013, which could prove to be far more accurate.

So, strip these numbers down to the bare bones, search emerges as the real winner and will continue to do so.

Telecoms companies are now truly waking up to the value of mobile advertising in the "wider remit of the [communications] ecosystem", says Hussain. Mobile itself is becoming its own very important stand alone medium with its very own attributes, and understanding how to fully utilize this medium will be fundamental to both consumers and advertisers.

Related Articles:

Online video advertising | Building brand identity | Videoconferencing

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: