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.
Geolocation technology is growing at a very rapid rate, and the market will be considerably larger in 2018.
A Berg Insight Report is now making recent news as it has revealed that location based marketing and advertising will soon make up a healthy 7 percent of all digital ads, which means that its popularity will be expanding quite rapidly over the next four years.
This will mean that geolocation advertising will represent 2 percent of all global ad spending.
If the report from the analysis firm is correct, then it will mean that the total value of the real time mobile location based marketing and advertising marketplace will have risen from where it was last year, at $1.66 billion, at a 54 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), to the point that it will have reached $14.8 billion by 2018.
This will then mean that location based marketing will make up 38.6 percent of all mobile advertising.
The report also underscored some of the latest evolutions in the real time mobile location based marketing ecosystem. This includes the latest popular geolocation using technologies such as the beacons that use Bluetooth low energy (BLE). Though even the most commonly used among these methods is still relatively rare, Berg Insight predicts that the adoption of beacon using methods will have exploded before the end of 2014.
This use of beacon technology will be used the most among retail marketers that will be adopting them as a part of innovative new programs to help to engage with consumers and provide them with ads and content that they will find useful and relevant. This will also be very appealing to retailers as it will provide them with a far greater opportunity to understand how customers use their stores, from the time spent in various areas, to the actual navigation patterns.
According to Berg Insight senior analyst, Rickard Andersson, while discussing this location based marketing study, “The concept of Bluetooth marketing has been reinvigorated following Apple’s introduction of iBeacon in 2013.” He added that the broadening of the beacon ecosystem now includes a number of other very important players, including Qualcomm and PayPal, as well as some promising startups, such as Shopkick and Swirl.
