Mobile marketing is in its infancy with few companies looking beyond SMS marketing, JupiterResearch has claimed.
According to its new report ‘Mobile Advertising in Europe: Achieving Search and Display Revenues in the Long Term’, mobile marketing tactics will struggle to meet initial high expectations.
The relatively small audience of mobile media users, coupled with the lack of critical mass of educated advertisers able to measure return on investment, will restrain mobile media’s potential in the midterm, the analyst firm said. Mobile devices will only become part of the marketing remit for businesses once stakeholders have implemented interoperable and independent standards.
“Mobile advertising is destined to be a multi-billion euro industry but the maturation of this industry could take a decade,” said David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch. “Advertisers tend to be slow to react to consumers’ changing behaviours and will need more than encouraging trials and early click-through rates to begin to invest massively in this nascent medium.”
Despite these warnings, JupiterResearch anticipates that search and display revenues will together reach €1.3bn by 2012.
Consumers’ limited willingness to pay for mobile content coupled with convergence of the free internet will foster the emergence of ad-funded business models. With the onset of affordable multimedia handsets, enhanced networks and transparent data plans, some 40pc of mobile users will regularly access the internet on their mobile devices in five years’ time, JupiterResearch anticipates.
“The mobile advertising market will grow significantly over the next few years and move from its current trial stage to a more mature business where stakeholders will leverage consumers’ uptake of mobile data services,” said Thomas Husson, senior analyst at JupiterResearch.
By Niall Byrne
