Tag: mobile advertisments

Advertisers have yet to warm up to this technique as they have yet to be convinced of the receptiveness of consumers.

Despite the fact that the rate of smartphone ownership is skyrocketing throughout the Middle Eastern region, and while mobile ads do seem to provide a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers, those firms remain hesitant about its use as they have yet to receive adequate evidence to suggest that consumers will be entirely receptive to it.

This has led advertisers in the region to hold a lukewarm opinion of mobile marketing, at best, so far.

According to the Arabnet digital hub founder, Omar Christidis, “Mobile is probably the underserved segment and it is probably the most over looked opportunity in the market today.” This, even though the use of mobile ads is growing at an extremely rapid rate. However, when compared to other channels, there is still a considerable difference in the amount of money and resources that are being dedicated to marketing over smartphones and tablets.

It is only recently that spending growth for mobile ads has started to close in on other channels.

Christidis also pointed out that “If you look at time spent on media versus ad dollars, the largest gap will be seen in mobile. This was the gap that existed even in developed markets until recently.” However he reminded that if the stats are examined, then it would show that the amount of for every ad dollar spent, there is more time spent viewing the advertisement is notably lower among mobile device users than it is among print readers.

Gartner has recently released a report that showed that by the end of this year, the amount of money spent on mobile advertising would reach the $18 billion mark. However, in the Middle East, that figure will be only $20 million. This is a measly statistic when taking the penetration of smartphones into consideration for that region.

However, the Criteo managing director of Eastern Europe and MEA, Dirk Henke pointed out that “It is very similar to advertising on desktop when it started.” Mobile ads appear to be following the same path as the original online advertising when it was in its infancy.

The latest report from Millennial Media has revealed that this industry is a powerful smartphone ad user.

Millennial Media has now released its most recent SMART report, which seeks to offer a deeper look at the restaurant industry, and in this edition, it has indicated that mobile marketing plays an important role among restaurants.

The report has provided considerable insight into the use of these smartphone friendly ads by these businesses.

Among the mobile marketing statistics that were provided in the report was one that indicated that 80 percent of restaurant campaigns targeting smartphone users includes a page or site that features a store locator. This is extremely notable, because when Millennial Media compared that figure to the average of all total campaigns over its platform, businesses as a whole were using that feature only 15 percent of the time.

The ad network also determined that restaurants have more searchable mobile marketing campaigns than the average.

What it found was that among the mobile marketing campaigns of restaurants, 70 percent allowed consumers to search their site from their smartphones. The average among all of the platform users, was much lower, at 24 percent.

The primary goal for restaurant mobile marketing campaigns – that is, in 80 percent of cases – was to boost foot traffic to their locations. The MM platform overall saw the same goal for their campaigns in only 9 percent of businesses.

In the first quarter of this year, the leading spending vertical was Telecom, and this experienced a year over year increase in spending by 102 percent. The next three leading verticals after Telecom were Entertainment, Finance, and Retail.

The mobile marketing and commerce report showed that when all was said and done, there were eight different verticals that experienced growth in their spending that was 100 percent or greater when compared to the same time in 2012. The leader was Sports, which saw growth in its spending by 600 percent, compared to Q1 2012.

The three leading mobile marketing campaign goals for brands and marketers, said the SMART report, were “Sustained In-Market Presence,” followed by “Driving Site/Mobile Traffic,” and finally “Driving Registrations.”