Tip of the Iceberg

The mobile advertising industry celebrated another milestone last week, with the release of the IAB/PWC 2010 mobile ad spend figures. With spend up 116 per cent year-on-year to £83m, mobile has well and truly made its mark on the UK advertising landscape.

Increasing adoption of smartphones was identified as a key driver behind the growth in ad spend, and there is enormous potential for this channel to advance, as smartphone and tablet devices reach critical mass in countries like the UK and US.
And critical mass is undoubtedly where the market is headed. We need only look at the news coming out of CTIA last week, where tablet and smartphone announcements stole the show, with new devices from HTC, Samsung and Nokia (to name but a few) dominating press coverage. All these major players are pitching their new innovative devices alongside the iPad 2, and vying for a slice of this fast-growing and lucrative space.

Consumers, in turn, are flocking to snap up these new devices in their droves. The effect of which has been a fundamental change in the way that people are consuming media. As consumers switch off from TV advertising and spend less time surfing the web on a PC, smartphones and tablets are becoming the devices of choice for constant and spontaneous internet access. 

Mobile media consumption typically follows a very different pattern to traditional online habits. Consumers tend to access the web on smartphone and tablet devices at home over wi-fi connections during the evening, or to hunt for bargains or product information while browsing the shops at weekends. This represents a new and significant opportunity for brands to engage with consumers, using more engaging and interactive ad units at times when traditional online traffic is lower.
Smartphones and tablets also open up new opportunities to integrate TV and online campaigns with mobile devices and content, and the possibility to interact more effectively with consumers through richer mobile ad units.

Untapped potential
The opportunity to reach and create interactive brand engagement with consumers over mobile is clear, and yet there is still huge untapped potential that most brands, ad agencies and content owners are yet to discover.  

This has, in large part been down to a certain reticence among advertisers to invest in the channel, due to insufficient transparency and reporting metrics to measure return on investment. But we are starting to see a shift in attitudes, as methods to track activity and prove the value of mobile ad campaigns become increasingly sophisticated. Mobile ad networks like Adfonic, offer full post-click measurement, with the ability to track app installs and measure conversions post-click on mobile sites, along with the capability to measure the real success of click-to-video campaigns.

This level of transparency provides advertisers with the performance visibility they need to see how well their ads are performing in real time, track back to CPA targets, and ultimately, drive up ROI. 

This drive to measure mobile campaigns with the same transparency as online has resulted in online standards making inroads in mobile advertising. Third-party ad serving technologies that track when a user clicks on a third-party ad tag are gaining traction within mobile, and will continue to instil greater confidence in mobile advertising measurement.

With smartphone penetration increasing globally, and greater transparency, together with advancements in mobile payments and local advertising now a reality, brands must start developing and executing their strategies and following their audiences on to mobile. As they do, we’ll undoubtedly see the disparity between mobile media consumption and mobile ad spend closing. 116 per cent year-on-year growth for 2010 is certainly to be applauded, but in reality, it’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the channel is capable of delivering. 

Paul Childs is COO at Adfonic