New research released today by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reveals insights into the current state of the mobile industry. For the fourth year running, the IAB and research agency Work have delved into the current media climate producing a snapshot study into the mobile industry from an agency viewpoint. The survey, conducted in October 2011, was completed by over 400 agency employees across 23 different agencies- making it the largest ever seen of its kind in the UK.
Mobile advertising is less often being bought as an experiment with the study showing a 33% increase from last year as 28% of agencies “regularly including mobile as part of client proposals”. However, 74% of agencies still feel that client understanding of mobile is the biggest barrier to mobile taking a bigger share of digital spend, making it the largest barrier by far.
Measurement resurfaced as an issue throughout the survey, as 31% of respondents revealed they have no idea about the possibilities for campaign measurement- which was in fact up by 19% from 26% 2010. Furthermore, a new metric that was measured for 2011 was ‘how to plan mobile advertising’ with 32% stating they had no idea how to do this.
M-Commerce is the largest knowledge gap for agencies, with only 11% of agencies claim to understand NFC well, and only 8% understand M-Commerce as a whole well. However, when asked later what the most exciting development for mobile advertising was, NFC came out as one of the top themes. Recent M-Commerce research carried out by the IAB showed that 74% of consumers stated that NFC services would be a good idea so agencies clearly feel their knowledge must improve to keep up with potential customer adoption.
Finally, looking into the future, 90% felt that mobile will be the fastest growing media for the next 5 years, and in particular that mobile search will be influential. The majority (57%) said that search spend in mobile will overtake online search spend by 2015.
Alex Kozloff, senior mobile manager, IAB said “It is fantastic to see that the percentage of agency employees with a good understanding of mobile advertising has doubled from 24% in 2008, to 50% in 2010. However, with this advancement of the industry comes new pressure to look at areas such as tracking and measurement, something the IAB is working closely with the industry to improve. But overall fantastic news to see that mobile is becoming an established part of the agency ecosystem.”
Important stats from the research:
- 28% of respondents said that mobile was now a regular part of client proposals
- 50% of agency employees have a good understanding of mobile advertising
- 98% of agencies are spending money on mobile advertising
- 94% of agencies are spending money on tablet advertising
- 55% agree that mobile inventory is good value for money compared to other media
