If mobile isn’t already a big part of your marketing strategy it’s time to get serious about smartphones – new research shows advertising spending is shifting in a big way.
A new study by Juniper Research – Digital Advertising: Online, Mobile & Wearables 2015-2019 – predicts annual global advertising spend on mobile devices will reach US$105 billion by 2019, up from about US$51 billion this year.
“The research suggests that this increase in advertising spend is in large part attributable to an attitude shift amongst brands and retailers who now use mobile as a core channel for consumer engagement,” said Juniper, in the report. “It argues that the ability of smartphones to deliver targeted, personalised and timely advertising – allied to the media-stacking trends amongst consumers – means that mobile advertising offers both high visibility and high response rates.”
While marketers are following consumers to their smartphones, they will also need to tread carefully. While the availability of more and more information about consumers has marketers eager to use “big data” analytics to gain insight into consumer behaviour from purchasing patterns to demographics, the research showed that consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy and how consumers are using their personal information.
“When the device user’s information is shared for advertising purposes, without their prior consent, consumers may feel a violation of their rights has occurred,” said Juniper. “It therefore stressed the need for consumers to be ‘opted-in’ to any data sharing to avoid both potential litigation and adverse publicity for the brands.”
The report also found out that programmatic advertising will be driving the near-term growth in digital advertising as the technology advances, the higher engagement rates of video will lead to progressive growth in video advertising, and addressing viewability concerns should be top of mind for the marketing industry.