Media Playground: Mobile advertising will be a £2bn industry by 2015

MobHappy’s Russell Buckley predicts that mobile advertising will be a £2 billion industry by 2015.

Speaking at MediaTel Group’s Media Playground 2012 event last week, Buckley said that “mobile is a very powerful channel… there are lots of opportunities, especially around branded apps”.

Buckley claims we are only seeing the beginning of mobile advertising – he expects mobile browsing to make up to 40% of all online browsing in two years time; and he claimed that Facebook will be mobile company in two years.

However, Brainstorm Mobile Solutions’ channel development director Iain McCallum warned that brands are still “nervous” of mobile campaigns. “It is such a personal medium, advertisers cannot afford to get it wrong,” he said.

McCallum suggested that an important step to moving forward is finding out exactly what consumers will and will not accept in terms of mobile advertising.

Tamsin Hussey, fellow panellist and group account director at Joule, said clients know they should be ‘doing’ mobile now but they need educating about how. “Lots of education needs to be done,” she said. “The industry is still young and not many people know how to do mobile advertising well.”

James Connelly, co-founder and managing director of Fetch Media, is confident that mobile will receive more brand budget in the next few years but agreed with Hussey that it will only follow once advertisers are educated about the right possibilities. Connelly claims that the brands which are investing in mobile now want to see a very clear return on their investment.

For Connelly, the big shift will come when clients move budgets from TV to mobile, though he says at the moment there is still a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. However, he has seen “lots of success with direct response campaigns”. Buckley believes this is because smartphone ownership has grown so rapidly – “consumers engage more with advertising and marketing when they have the right tools – ie, a smartphone,” he said.

Hussey concluded by pointing out that one of the major barriers is making sure brands get the basics right – starting with optimisation. “Consumers want a good experience and their journey often starts with search,” she said. “They are looking for information, sites, images and so on that are formatted for mobile.” Hussey complained that the focus is often campaign-based but said brands are missing the point if they do not have the basic infrastructure to support mobile.

A stat mentioned during the last session of the day was that over 60% of users who arrive at a non-mobile optimised site go to a competitor site that is optimised.