Mobile marketing grows by a third

By Sara Kimberley, marketingmagazine.co.uk, 27 April 2010, 10:25AM

LONDON - Mobile advertising rocketed by 32% year-on-year in 2009 to £37.6m, with entertainment, media and telecoms brands propelling growth.

Mobile ad spend has been boosted by the iPhone

The Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCooper's second annual mobile ad spend study showed despite a fall in ad spend, mobile advertising exceeded expectations last year.

Entertainment and media brands boosted spend, accounting for 61.5%, followed by telecoms with 14.7% and finance with 8.1%. Consumer goods only accounted for 3.2% of mobile ad spend, while Government, social and political accounted for 2.7%.

The increase in spend was boosted by search advertising, up by 41% to £20.2m, increasing market share from 50% to 54%.

Display advertising also grew by 24% to £17.4m, propelled by growth of banner ads and text links, taking a new market share of 39%. However, its growth was stumped by spend for pre and post roll, as well as in-game advertising which halved to £200k.

The survey reveals spend was driven by targeting, immediacy and return on investment. Mobile internet usage was also a significant factor with 21% more people access the mobile internet every month and spending 32 minutes a day surfing the web.

Other formats including display advertising within SMS / MMS were up 26% year on year, to £1.2 million that led to a market share of 3.2% from 3.4% in 2008.

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk