Mobile advertising metrics key challenge facing marketers

Mobile advertising adoption has been compared by the IAB to a ‘two-speed economy’ following the release of new figures on state of the market.

The second annual IAB/TNS Mobile Landscape Study found that two-thirds of the more experienced marketers surveyed expect display campaigns will have a mobile component by 2016. These marketers are also using more sophisticated metrics and are more open to increasing budgets for mobile activities, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) stated.

The report found nearly half of all display campaigns have mobile components today, and this is expected to grow by 43 per cent by 2016. Advertisers also showed a growing awareness of mobile advertising, with the ratio of those lacking understanding decreasing from 23 per cent to 14 per cent year-on-year.

Key development areas nominated by marketers this year include location targeting, video and cross-screen targeting. The role of video in mobile ad content, for example, is forecast to grow 85 per cent over the same timeframe.

The number one barrier to further investment is measurement weaknesses. Twenty-five per cent of respondents said this was the single biggest issue facing mobile advertising, up from 17 per cent last year.

Seventy-five per cent of agencies and advertisers also said publishers who lack a strong mobile presence or offering risk becoming less relevant to advertisers.

The IAB previously reported 14 per cent of digital was spent on mobile advertising in the last quarter of 2013.

“It is noteworthy that we’ve closed the gap in terms of advertisers’ understanding the importance of mobile,” said IAB director of research, Gai Le Roy. “The challenge before us now is to address measurement, which is something the IAB is deeply invested in.”

Last year, the IAB and Nielsen announced a mobile advertising audience measurement pilot in a bid to address industry demand for better mobile audience metrics.

Marketers were also found by IAB and TNS to be more comfortable with the mobile Web over apps, despite the fact that 89 per cent of consumer mobile use time in the US was shown to be spent on apps instead.

The latest report was based on in-depth surveys of more than 100 marketing and media professionals in Australia.

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