As the global mobile advertising market continues to grow, it’s clear that the SMS segment dominates the terrain.
Why the huge growth in mobile? That’s due to the rapidly accelerating adoption of smartphones and tablets around the world. For instance, about 90 percent of adults in the U.S. own a mobile phone, with 60 percent of them smartphones.
In fact, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) projects that in the near future, smartphone penetration in the U.S. will expand to 80 percent.
“With consumers carrying mobile devices wherever they go, it has become crucial for marketers to target this large consumer base with mobile advertisements and promotions,” according to Transparency Market Research (TMR). “A mobile advertising platform firm provides services to marketers that allow them to send these advertisements to consumers using mobile devices. Each distinct mobile advertising platform contains opportunities for marketers to deliver their message to a broad range of consumers.”
For the moment, SMS is “cleaning up.”
“Mobile advertising services can be deployed to send text messages to cell phones,” notes TMR. “These services are also used for marketing using banner ads which appear on smartphone applications. These ads appear at the top of the page (mobile web banner) or at the bottom of the page (mobile web poster). SMS advertising, which accounts for over 90 percent of the total mobile marketing revenue, dominates the market. One of the advantages of SMS is that it allows users to view and send brief messages unobtrusively and without any privacy issues.”
Also on the rise is MMS (multimedia messaging services). Other forms — from mobile videos, mobile games, during mobile TV receipt, and full-screen interstitials — are also growing.
“In the coming few years, the global mobile advertising market will observe advertisers focusing more on performance,” contends TMR. “They will increase their spending as their ROI gets clearer along with more valuable and quantifiable results. The preference of location-based advertising is growing and will continue to assert its importance in the future. Location-based technology allows advertisers to deploy hyper-targeting, which enhances the effectiveness of mobile advertisements.”
