Brand spending on mobile advertising will grow globally from $123 million in 2006 to $3.5 billion in 2011, according to a new forecast from marketing research firm eMarketer. But those long-term growth prospects may mask some short-term obstacles to putting more brand messages on mobile handsets.
Certain platforms, such as text messaging and mobile music downloads, are well on the way to establishing themselves as mass-market media, according to senior analyst John du Pre Gauntt, the author of the report.
But the mobile Internet is still fairly limited as a channel for brand promotions. Only 6% of the top U.S. brands have mobile versions of their Web sites, and only 2% have the ability to detect a visitor’s mobile browser and optimize content for the site.
Among brand categories, Internet service providers and telecom brands were the most likely to offer mobile-Web versions of their sites (23% of the top 1000 U.S. brands), followed by travel (18%), entertainment (17%) and consumer electronics and home appliances (16%). By contrast, only 3% of the consumer-packaged-goods category offered a dedicated Mobile Web site, even though the category accounts for almost one-fifth of the top 1,000 brands, eMarketer found.
“The most important factor for the next two years will be the extent to which brand advertisers start spending true profit-and-loss budget on mobile brand advertising, instead of just experimenting with the medium,” Gauntt said in the report.
One factor that may help turbocharge mobile brands ads is Google’s announcement in September that its AdSense paid-ad platform was now fully extended into mobile content. With increased potential for Web publishers to make money from mobile ads via Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and MSN, “the law of large numbers says that more publishers will start optimizing for mobile soon,” Gauntt said. That should mean a better experience for mobile Internet users and, in turn, a larger audience for mobile branding.
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