Mobile marketing and advertising industry keeps growing, with one six-month period in 2010 saw spending expand in the US by almost 2.5%. That and other data prompted ABI Research to forecast that in 2016, revenue from mobile display ads will be getting close to $1.5 billion.
According to the company’s practice director Neil Strother, about one third of the smartphone owners polled had clicked on at least one mobile advertisement. Overall spending on mobile ad media has accelerated with the arrival of “back to school” and holiday seasons, and is expected to approach $1 billion by the end of the year.
By now, about 20% of all major companies have done something with mobile marketing, and some of them are doing so repeatedly. Today’s mobile campaigns can cost $100,000 or more and annual budgets may run to several million dollars.
ABI Research puts mobile marketing and advertising into five categories: text messages, mobile display (banner) ads, mobile search, in-app advertising and in-video advertising. They expect that although mobile is often seen as a distinct channel, eventually there will be nothing special about it – it will be understood as an integrated part of a campaign’s overall strategy.