One of my “no-brainer” marketing predictions for 2012 was that mobile advertising and app development would begin to take up more than the meager 1% or less of marketing spend as reported by businesses in 2011.
Well it didn’t take long for reports to surface that both were taking off – maybe even faster than mobility experts predicted.
In the last week, 2 reports surfaced: bid management firm IgnitionOne reported that mobile search advertising was up 269% in the fourth quarter vs. the same period last year.
Then, mobile analytics firm Flurry updated it’s report from last summer that showed that time spent on mobile apps has been higher than time spent on the web since June of last year!
Mobile Ad Revenue
In addition to the 269% increase in spending on mobile search ads, IgnitionOne also reported that mobile impressions were up even higher at 317%. Suggesting that the increases in mobile search usage continue to outpace spend despite these triple-digit growth rates.
Meanwhile, an article in Digiday covering the IgnitionOne study also reported that another search ad company, Marin software was reporting that mobile search as a percentage of all search has doubled since the third quarter of 2010. Marin reported that mobile search (smart phones) comprised 6% of all searches while tablets garnered an additional 4% share of total search.
But are mobile search ads more effective? Marin reported that smart phone and tablet ads generated 31% and 37% higher click through rates than traditional search.
Digiday reports that users are “migrating” their search patterns to mobile devices but I’m not sure I agree. I do agree that advertisers should consider mobile search as an important part of the advertising mix and should allocate funding to mobile projects immediately. Additionally, marketers need to consider mobile-optimized content and mobile-optimized landing pages and websites to meet the needs of their audience. So it is not just about ad dollars but ensuring the right content strategy and platforms exist to support these efforts.
Mobile App Usage
And to support my contention that mobile search may not be coming at the expense of traditional web consumption, the Flurry report shows that time spent on mobile apps is simply increasing, to 94 minutes per day as of December:
TechCrunch reports that we should consider this data cautiously since it uses Alex and ComScore data using differing methodologies and is not necessarily the best way to determine web browsing patterns. But regardless, the trends pass the sniff test.
Flurry reported that over 40 Billion apps have been downloaded since the launch of the iTunes and Android mobile app marketplaces and it doesn’t appear that the increases in use are slowing down. They also reported that the decreases in time spent on the web was due to less time spent on Facebook. They reported that time spent on the web minus Facebook was up 2% from June to December.
The most important categories of mobile apps are Games (at almost half of all downloads), followed by Social Networking, Entertainment and News apps.
The Bottom Line
Get mobile and get it done fast.
In 4 Steps To Mobile Success, I outlined these actions:
- Create a mobile-optimized website
- Develop mobile-optimized content
- Allocate funds to mobile advertising
- Consider games, apps and tablet ads relative to your audience
In closing, I like to point to this chart from Mary Meeker’s Web 2.0 presentation so you can look to your own spend and ask if you are keeping up with the media consumption patterns of your audience?
