Marketers have increasingly been spending more on mobile and with good success. A 2011 IAB study, “Marketer Perspectives on Mobile Advertising, showed 63 percent of marketers in retail, travel, financial services and other industries increased their mobile marketing spend over the past two years, Not only that, 29 percent of those marketers reported an increase of over 50 percent in mobile.

Mobile advertising includes mobile paid search ads, mobile display ads, ads delivered through location-based services and text message ads. The IAB predicts continued mobile growth, as 72 percent of the 300 marketers surveyed planned to increase their mobile advertising budget, with 35 percent of them admitting to increases over 50 percent.

Fifty-one percent of the marketers surveyed said mobile advertising was an integral part of their overall advertising strategy. The other 49 percent said they were very interested in mobile advertising (35 percent are experimenting with mobile, while 14 percent use mobile ads on an ad hoc basis).

The survey also queried marketers on what types of mobile devices they are targeting, and results are shown below:

• 60% smartphones
• 31% tablets
• 22% feature phones
• 10% e-readers
• 3% game devices

New Ad Guidelines Issued by the Mobile Marketing Association

The Mobile Marketing Association just released an updated version of its MMA Universal Mobile Ad Package (v 2.0), which simplifies the process of creating, buying and selling mobile ads. Created with participation of the association members and added input from professionals in various industries, version 2.0 is designed to make it easier and more consistent to create, buy and sell mobile ads designed for smartphones, feature phones and tablets.

MMA CEO Greg Stuart said, “We’ve taken 60-plus ad unit sizes and streamlined them down to just six. That simplicity frees brands and agencies to focus on developing innovative, compelling mobile campaigns that span the widest possible variety of devices and demographics. As a result, the new guidelines make it easier than ever to buy and sell ads for phones and tablets.”

To create the Universal Mobile Ad Package v.2.0, the MMA analyzed hundreds of billions of mobile ad impressions, delivered across the global mobile advertising marketplace in Q2 2011. The data was sorted by smartphones, feature phones, networks and site publishers, and included mobile websites and mobile apps. This data helped determine the six unit sizes in the guidelines.

The final guidelines, supported by organizations including the Newspaper Association of America and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, was the result of collaboration between the sales side (networks, rich media ad vendors and site publishers) and the buying side (global advertising agencies).

The Mobile Marketing Association, with over 700 member companies in nearly 50 countries, will promote ad networks and site publishers that comply with the guidelines by end April by issuing compliance stamps that can be placed on websites and marketing collateral.

Mobile Ad Spending Exceeded 2011 Expectations

As further proof that mobile marketing is on the rise and unstoppable, eMarketer announced results showing that 2011 U.S. Mobile Ad spending exceeded earlier predictions of $1 billion, closing the year at $1.45 billion. With an 89 percent growth from 2010-2011, eMarketer estimates U.S. mobile ad spending will grow 80 percent to $2.61 billion in 2012.

The U.S. mobile advertising market is growing much faster than expected, driven by the rapid increase in Google’s mobile search advertising business, advertisers’ growing attraction to display ads on tablet and smartphones, and the growing number of mobile ad networks such as Google’s AdMob, Apple’s iAd, and Millennial Media.