Mobile marketing budgets to grow 150% by 2013
Coca-Cola and Xbox are among brands set to increase their mobile ad investment, as new research shows mobile marketing budgets will grow by 150% over the next five years despite the economic downturn.
An O2 survey by Vanson Bourne of 100 marketing and IT directors from the financial services, manufacturing and retail sectors found that 60% favoured mobile marketing due to its targeted nature.
Some 85% said mobile marketing campaigns generate a higher response than traditional methods.
Mark Dawson, head of CRM EMEA at Xbox, said, "There hasn't been as much investment as I thought there might have been two years ago, but there now seems to be more traffic. We certainly plan to invest more and shouldn't be too far off that mark."
Prinz Pinakatt, manager of interactive marketing for Europe at Coca-Cola, said the company's focus on mobile was less about response and more about brand-building.
"A 150% increase in spend seems optimistic to me but the response rate for mobile is certainly higher than other methods. We're not always looking for response," he said.
The research also revealed 88% of marketing directors anticipated behavioural targeting to be an important capability by 2010, while 46% said they would only use mobile marketing if they were able to target their campaign specifically.
David Fieldhouse, mobile manager at media agency Mediacom, said behavioural targeting is developing into a key element of online activity for many of the agency's clients, and also in their mobile campaigns.
"We believe the deeper level of targeting capable via mobile is its USP," he said. "Using each mobile user's unique ID, combined with location-based targeting, enables precision and relevancy."
David Hilton, marketing director for UK and Ireland at Sony Ericsson, said targeting will help with the growth of mobile spend. "We ran a campaign with Ibiza Rocks on the music sections of mobile portals, which showed a good return. But until more people have phones offering a better mobile experience, it could harm the brand," he said.
The research showed that 43% of marketers are concerned people would view SMS from brands as spam.
But Mark Cody, channel business manager at O2 UK, said SMS has worked well for many of its corporate clients. "A lot of brands feel it would be hard to integrate mobile marketing into their mix, but when you speak to companies that have tried it, it's very simple for the majority of brands."
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