Finance and auto industries fuel UK's booming mobile ad business

The UK mobile advertising business had a boom year in 2010 reporting revenues of £83 million, an increase of 116 per cent over 2009, according to reports from the Internet Advertising Bureau and accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

During this period the entertainment and media industries continued to be the major spender on mobile ads, although its share dropped from over 61 per cent in 2009 down to nearly 33 per cent last year, as financial services and the automotive sector both increased their ad investments.

Both sectors more than doubled their spending over the period. Financial services moving to second place with 18.6 per cent of the total, up from 8.1 per cent in 2009, with the automotive sector increasing its mobile ad spend to 6.5 per cent of the overall amount, up from 2.5 per cent in 2009.

Jon Mew, director of mobile operations at the IAB, was reported by NMA as saying that 2010 brought a "dramatic change" in the way in which consumers interacted with mobiles. "Advertisers are following consumer eyeballs, which have been on mobile this year," he said. "The increase in spend also represents the greater advertising opportunities, such as location-based options."

These findings, from a joint IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers study, also identified that mobile advertising was being driven by the upsurge in smartphone ownership and consumers using them in conjunction with other media.

Also of note, the research found that mobile search was the largest influence on total mobile ad spend, comprising 66 per cent and increasing from £20.2 million in 2009 to £54.9 million in 2010. However, this growth was to the detriment of display advertising share, which dropped 39 per cent to 29 per cent from 2009 to last year, despite a spending increase of 61 per cent, from £17.4 million to £28.1 million.

For more:
- see this NMA article
- see this Marketing Magazine article

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