When someone says the word “Advertising” what do you think of? TV ads, billboards, posters, radio ads, internet ads; all of these are the traditional fare of the advertising world. But there is another medium out there that we use all the time, Mobile. Mobile advertising is becoming big, really big. $11.5 billion is the rough estimate of what Mobile marketing is worth this year, that might not sound like too much, but that’s up by almost $3 billion from 2012. The mobile market’s extreme growth is not looking like it’s going to stop any time soon.
At least, according to a report by Gartner that projects by 2016, mobile marketing will be worth more than $24 Bn.
(UPDATE 2017: In 2016, advertising on mobile passed the $100 Billion mark.)
It’s not really that surprising when you look at the evidence; mobile data usage has doubled almost year on year since 2010 and that’s a trend that looks to continue into the foreseeable future as mobile devices penetrate more and more into the global society.
What is interesting though, is that as much as mobile advertising is worth, many businesses and industries are effectively overlooking it in favour of more traditional marketing forms. This is a major mistake.
Whereas with more traditional advertising where the mediums you’re talking to your customers through mediums that you can’t guarantee they’ll be able to see, with mobile it’s a near certainty that they will have their phone on them at all times. You essentially have a captive audience for your ads, all you need to do is target them effectively and you may just find that your revenue will start increasing.
After all, retail businesses that have created mobile apps for themselves have seen an up to 26% increase in revenue just because they were easily reachable through mobile means. 26% is nothing to sniff at in terms of revenue increase, but many businesses are not even considering mobile as an option.
This is evidenced by the vast number of non-mobile optimised websites out there, businesses are currently not considering how powerful mobile is. Google is on a crusade to help this by downrating non-mobile optimised websites in search results, and this is another reason why businesses should get with the times.
If you don’t catch up, you’re very quickly going to be left behind. Mobile is still expanding at a massive rate, and whilst it is guaranteed to slow, by the time it does the world is going to look like a very different place. Just like the .net revolution in the 90s, Mobile is set to change the way we interact with information forever.
Mobile advertising is where businesses should be aiming, and the earlier they get in there the better. Of course this applies to mobile apps as well, although we are assuming that as you’re an app developer, you’re probably aware of mobile advertising. Just remember that marketing is the key to a successful app launch.
