72% of Marketers to Increase Mobile Advertising Budgets
A new report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and conducted by Ovum reveals that nearly three-quarters of key ad spend decision-makers expect to boost mobile advertising budgets in the next two years.
The survey found that marketers understand the benefits of mobile advertising, as immediacy, cost effectiveness, increased engagement and reach were all cited as of “high importance” in terms of benefits.
The report notes that while mobile’s complementary nature to other media is yet to be tapped, mobile is key to adding interactivity to other media that aren’t interactive themselves.
The top objective for mobile advertising is increasing brand awareness, which got a 93 percent response. Increasing engagement and support for specific promotions each received an 86 percent response, followed by driving sales in general with an 83 percent response, and customer relationship marketing with 77 percent.
However, the importance of these objectives varies by industry. For example, increasing brand awareness via mobile advertising activity is more important to retail marketers than to consumer goods marketers. On the other hand, support for specific promotions is more important to media and entertainment marketers than to travel marketers.
Most respondents were satisfied with the outcome of their mobile advertising activity. “This is a positive start but performance needs to improve to produce the highest levels of satisfaction as only a very small portion of the survey were completely satisfied with the results,” the report notes. “And although none of the respondents were completely dissatisfied a significant number were reasonably dissatisfied, reiterating that delivering on objectives needs to get better.”
Privacy issues and device fragmentation are the top two challenges facing mobile advertising, according to respondents.
The report found that 55 percent of respondents said their companies allocate less than $50,000 per year for their mobile advertising budget. Meanwhile, 28 percent said their companies allocate $50,000-$150,000. Ten percent said their companies allocate $150,000-$300,000 per year, and 7 percent said their companies allocate more than $300,000 per year to mobile advertising budgets.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said their mobile budgets have increased in the last two years, while 37 percent said their budgets remained the same. No respondents said their mobile budgets decreased during this time.
Looking forward, 72 percent of respondents said their mobile budgets will increase during the next two years – 35 percent said their mobile budgets will increase more than 50 percent in the next two years. Twenty-six percent said their mobile budgets will remain the same, while 1 percent said their mobile budgets will decline by less than 50 percent.
Eighty-nine percent of respondents said smartphones will receive increased focus in the next two years, while 74 percent said the same for tablets and 63 percent said the same for feature phones.
Source:
