"Mobile advertising is now recognised as an opportunity for brands, advertisers and publishers to engage consumers in a targeted and contextual manner, improving returns," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. "For that reason, mobile advertising budgets are set to increase tremendously across the various categories and regions, growing from 0.5 per cent of the total advertising budget in 2010 to over 4 per cent in 2015."
"As the adoption of smartphones and media tablets extends to more consumers, the audience for mobile advertising will increase and become easier to segment and target, driving the growth of mobile advertising spend for brands and advertisers," said Andrew Frank, research vice president at Gartner. "Brand marketers who want to include mobile in their advertising initiatives should not delay their trials, and should have their budgets in place now to take advantage of mass consumer adoption of smartphones and media tablets."
North America and Western Europe are the regions where mobile advertising budgets will grow most, representing 28 per cent and 25 per cent of the global market by 2015 (see Table 1). However, Asia/Pacific and Japan will remain the leading market throughout the forecast period. Asia/Pacific and Japan is forecast to account for 49.2 per cent of mobile advertising in 2011, and 33.6 per cent of the global market in 2015.
Gartner analysts said various types of mobile advertising will behave differently.
"Mobile search, which includes paid positioning on maps and various forms of augmented reality, all of which can be informed by location, will spearhead mobile ad spending," Ms Baghdassarian said. "Mobile display, which includes both standard Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) banner formats and nonstandard rich media and interactive formats, will continue to be closely divided between in-app and mobile web (in-browser) placements, reflecting consumer usage."
For several years, mobile advertising has been scrutinized, and it is expected to take off, thanks to various players in the market, from communication service providers (CSPs) to ad networks.
"In 2011, we are finally seeing some important drivers fall into place, so that we can expect the market to more than double year-over-year in the coming two years," said Mr Frank. "This doesn't mean, by any stretch, that the experience delivered by mobile advertising will reach its optimum point in that time frame. We expect that targeting and contextualisation, especially in social sites and applications, will carry on improving throughout the forecast period and beyond."
Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Forecast: Mobile Advertising, Worldwide, 2008- 2015." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/....