Ahead of this year's show, research was conducted amongst over 1,000 visitors of last year's event, which revealed that investment in mobile marketing was expected to more than double this year, with 37% of marketers claiming it would be an area of investment. Earlier this year ABI Research estimated that, as new platforms for ad-supported mobile search, video and gaming content services arrive, mobile marketing will grow to over $24 billion worldwide in 2013, from just $1.8 billion in 2007.
Andrew Grill, one of the mobile advertising industry's strategists and author of mobile marketing blog, London Calling, commented ahead of his presentation at the show: "Everyone has a mobile, and advertisers are looking to include this new medium in their marketing mix. We need a new approach that is not about reach and frequency - but is about relevancy. With mobile, small is beautiful. As a result, we need more targeted and personalised messages that are actually welcomed by the end user and therefore increases the relevancy of mobile marketing. Hence, ROI and sales conversion; this is what everyone is looking for from mobile."
As the value of mobile marketing continues to grow, with an estimated market value of £28.6 million last year in the UK according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, it offers the opportunity for extremely targeted and personal advertising direct to consumers. There is no question that mobile devices allow consumers to interact immediately with advertising, and many case studies of mobile marketing effectiveness have leveraged this in conjunction with other media channels.
Grill continued: "Mobile is such a personal device, and so we need to treat it in a different way and learn from all the mistakes we made with the internet 10 years ago. We actually know how the story will end with mobile if we look at the lessons learnt from the early days of the internet."