The marketing industry in the United Kingdom is poised to watch smartphone ads leap ahead of newspapers and magazines.
A new forecast was recently released regarding the future of mobile advertising in the United Kingdom, and it is believed that by next year, the channel will overtake the newspaper and magazine ad market, as well as the spending for TV commercials.
The forecast also predicted that spending on these smartphone and tablet ads will reach £4.5 billion in 2016.
The report was published by eMarketer, which is expecting to see a growth in mobile advertising spending by 96 percent during 2014, to bring it to a total of £2.02 billion. That said, even by the end of this year, it will still be only a sliver behind the forecasted £2.06 that is expected to be spent on print ads in newspapers during the same period of time, said the eMarketer report.
The mobile advertising opportunity in the U.K. is being seen as massive due to the device penetration there.
The report stated that “half of Britons are expected to own an iPad, Kindle, or similar tablet device by 2018”, and with this mobile device usage, it is easy to understand why the ad market over that channel is set to grow by another 60 percent in 2015, to bring it to £3.2 billion in total.
The report went on to say that “Continued robust growth in the mobile channel is driving the bulk of [overall] digital ad growth in the UK.” As both mobile and video ad spending is taking off at an explosive rate, eMarketer feels that this will only drive the ad spending throughout this year and next.
In fact, the complete market for digital advertising in the United Kingdom is expected to be worth £7.25 this year, rising to £7.97 next year, and then to £8.64 by the close of 2016. The report suggested that mobile advertising aimed at smartphone and tablet consumers will make up almost 30 percent of the overall ad spending that occurs in the country, this year. That figure should increase by over half by the end of 2016.
While advertising on these networks is considered to be vital a new survey questions their effectiveness.
Gallup has recently released the results of a social media marketing study that has suggested that this advertising channel is not nearly as effective as some of the leading networks – such as Facebook and Twitter – would have companies believe.
The recent “State of the American Consumer” report from the polling firm showed that few feel these ads work.
The Gallup poll results showed that only 5 percent of Americans feel that social media marketing has a considerable influence over the various products that they purchase. That said, a massive 62 percent of the survey participants felt that these ads had no effect at all on the decisions that they make with regards to purchasing. The survey involved the participation of 18,000 consumers in the United States.
The social media marketing study showed that offline interaction with brands were far more influential.
Participants in the survey stated that they were more heavily influenced by interactions with brands that occurred offline, such as those that occur during in-store visits and that they see in retail display windows. They felt that these were far more influential than ads that they saw over social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
It is expected that those social networks – and others – will be quite surprised by the findings, as will the brands that are expected to spend a total $11.4 billion on advertising over those two leading platforms by the close of 2014.
The Gallup report suggested that Americans are using their favorite social media platforms in order to interact with the people they know, and not necessarily the brands that they like. In fact, the publication suggested that those site users have learned to tune out the ads that are displayed in front of them while they use those social networks.
The social media marketing report said that “These channels do not motivate prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others,” adding that “Therefore, if companies want to acquire new customers, their best bet is to engage their existing customers and inspire them to advocate on their behalf.”
