IAB: 142% increase in mobile ad budgets

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IAB / Interactive Advertising BureauBrand marketer mobile budgets surged 142% between 2011 and 2013, according to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) analysis of figures released in a new IAB study, which updates the landmark “Marketer Perspectives on Mobile Advertising” survey of 2011. This finding supports the prior study’s prediction that brand marketers’ mobile advertising budgets were on the uptick. In addition, the survey showed that the number of marketers who maintained annual mobile budgets exceeding $300,000 more than quadrupled, rising from merely 7% in 2011 to 32% this year.


According to the 2013 “Marketer Perspectives on Mobile Advertising” study of 300 top-level brand marketing execs, all of whom are currently using mobile in their media mix, 74% expect that their companies’ mobile advertising spend will increase in the next two years – a similar number to those who anticipated an increase in the two years following the 2011 survey (72%).

Almost one in five respondents (19%) to the 2013 survey predict that their mobile budgets will increase by more than 50% in the next two years.

“Over the past two years, the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report has shown an impressive rise in mobile spend and this study establishes that marketers expect more vigorous growth to come,” said Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB. “These findings reaffirm that publishers need to make mobile a top priority in order to take advantage of strong brand marketer demand. In addition, it is a signal to all of us at IAB that we must continue initiatives, such as our HTML5 guidance for digital advertising, to fuel the mobile arena.”

As with the 2011 study, the 2013 survey asked marketers about the key challenges facing mobile advertising. The results clearly demonstrate that while hurdles remain, greater marketer experience and ongoing industry efforts have allowed the earlier urgency to abate. For example, a highly important challenge in 2011 was privacy issues, named by 40% of marketers. Surveying marketers in 2013, a year in which the Digital Advertising Alliance released mobile privacy guidelines, that number nearly halved to 22%. Back in 2011, 39% of respondents said that device/operating system fragmentation was of high concern. Only 23% say the same today. In addition, progress has evidently been made in the area of standard mobile metrics, as 31% of marketers cited it as a highly important challenge in 2011, with only 13% noting it in 2013.

In addition to comparing and contrasting against the 2011 findings, this year’s “Marketer Perspectives on Mobile Advertising” spotlights differences between marketers’ perceptions about mobile from the B2C and B2B sides of the fence:

•41% of B2B marketers rate mobile as still “experimental” as compared to only 27% of B2C

•B2B marketers are far less likely to be looking at feature phones as part of their mobile efforts, with 45% saying that those devices are “not a priority” as compared to 19% of B2C marketers

•B2C marketers are generally more satisfied with their mobile efforts than their B2B counterparts (70% vs. 50%)