The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released preliminary results to an upcoming survey in which marketers were asked about their mobile marketing budgets for the remainder of 2010 through 2011.
The results thus far indicate budgets for mobile marketing spend is set to rise 124% from 2010 to 2011, putting the total allocation to the mobile channel at roughly 4% of overall marketing budgets. Mobile as a marketing channel is up by the greatest single percentage, with “events and trade shows” the only other channel that’s projected to see growth in budget totals, surprisingly enough.
Looking at digital marketing budgets as a whole, budgets are expected to increase from nearly 30% to 32.3%, while television spending is only 15.4%, rising to a little more than 16 percent next year. Other interesting results of the survey indicate outdoor marketing is projected to drop 25.8%, newspapers 25.5% and direct mail by 17.5%. Marketers surveyed represent more than $2.3 billion spent on mobile media in 2010, and they say they’re allocating $5.5 billion next year.
The MMA indicates these key factors for the growth of mobile media budgets in the coming months:
- Smartphones other than the iPhone will experience greater adoption. Though the MMA grouped Android with Palm and Blackberry, the group still represents 86 percent adoption for 2011 compared with 77.5 percent for iPhone.
- But three other categories are expected to experience much sharper growth curves than either iPhone or Android. E-reader spending will jump from 2.5 percent to 18.75 percent; tablets from 22.5 percent to nearly 44 percent, and netbooks will rise from 6.25 percent to 20 percent.
- SMS and mobile Web sites are tied in adoption at 58 percent this year and 83 percent projections for next year, while mobile apps start from the same base and increase to 71 percent next year.
- Location based features are projected to have the largest increase among mobile tactics, up more than 265 percent, but – despite the earlier indicator that it’s even with mobile Web sites – SMS appears to be in for an increase of 141 percent in spending and mobile video for a 137 percent hike.
