Booming
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), in partnership with PwC, has published its annual look at the UK mobile advertising market. The headline figure is that £83 million was spent on mobile advertising in 2010, which was 116 percent up on the year before. The year-on-year increase in 2009 was only 32 percent.
The lion's share of this spend was on search advertising, which nearly tripled year-on-year from £20.2 million to £54.9 million. Most of the rest was taken up by banners and text links, but that market only grew by 62 percent. The nascent market of pre and post-roll ads shot up from £0.2 million to £1.1 million.
This breakdown of mobile display advertising by category shows entertainment and media now contributing a far smaller proportion of the total spend than it used to. It's also worth noting that smartphone penetration in the UK is still only 36 percent.
- Entertainment & Media - 32.9% (61.5% in 2009)
- Finance - 18.6% (8.1% in 2009)
- Telecoms - 14.3% (14.7% in 2009)
- Consumer Goods - 11.8% (3.2% in 2009)
- Automotive - 6.5% (2.5% in 2009)
Jon Mew, director of mobile and operations at the IAB, said: "This year's research shows that traditional advertisers such as finance, telecoms and consumer goods are really starting to understand the opportunities that mobile, and only mobile, offers. It's an exciting time for mobile advertising, and for advertisers who use the opportunities."
Anna Bartz, strategy manager at PwC, said: "We are witnessing patterns of growth similar to online advertising in its early stages. Increasing technology packed into handsets coupled with decreasing costs, presents brands with a tempting opportunity to target mobile consumers."
