Advertising on the small screen.

As a result of the mobile device phenomenon, advertising via phones and tablets has emerged as an attractive proposition for global brands to promote their products and services. The mobile device with its high daily use, large audience-reach and media capabilities is now top of mind for many brand managers, agencies organisations looking to influence the digitally connected generation. Revenues from mobile media are expected to reach $150 billion1 by the end of 2012. Advertisers are starting to utilise the possibilities of mobile advertising with spend expected to jump 85.4% to $11.6 billion by the end of 2012. With the more intelligent mobile advertising platforms finding their way into market, advertisers are now profiling users with the goal of providing more contextual adverts and increasing the likelihood of consumer engagement with the advert.

2 Advertising on the small screen

A. Developed world mobile advertising Across the developed world, rich media mobile advertising is growing from strength to strength. The growth in mobile advertising opportunities works hand-in-hand with the growth of smartphone devices. Globally smartphones in use have recently exceeded 1 billion devices2 and is expected to double by 2015 with the concentration of smart devices in developed markets. The good news for advertisers is many of those devices have the ability to execute rich media mobile advertising opportunities. Leading the mobile advertising charge is mobile internet banner advertising. Commonly known as display or mobile web banners, this type of advertising has evolved in particular with the growth of connected devices globally. The majority of mobile web banners that are displayed through publisher portals are served by third party mobile advertising networks. The ad networks are continually developing and enhancing customer engagement and with the growth of HTML5 compatible devices are allowing advertisers to engage with customers on the mobile phone like never before.

HTML5 is the next evolution of the HTML web development language and is focused on mobile devices. HTML5 allows for rich elements to be displayed through a compatible browser including audio, video, and other visually enriching experiences like enhanced navigation and menus on mobile internet sites. Through technologies like HTML5, mobile advertising networks are enabling advertisers to provide richer and more meaningful mobile advertising campaigns3. One of the new exciting opportunities is mobile video advertising. In the developed world, mobile video ads are becoming an increasingly important channel as customers move audiovisual viewing from the TV and PC over to the mobile device.

3 Advertising on the small screen

B. Developing world mobile advertising With rich media mobile advertising growing in the developed world, more traditional forms of mobile advertising are still relevant in emerging markets. This is driven by generally low smartphone penetration and proliferation of unconnected mobile devices4 and mobile internet enabled feature phones5. Across the African continent, low cost devices form the largest cross section of the handset landscape. Many of these mobile phones are legacy devices which are still in use. Generally these $10-$20+ devices that have basic functionality like voice calling and SMS. They however don’t have mobile internet connectivity. But as technology evolves, more price competitive mobile internet connected devices are getting into the hands of the subscribers, who are utilising the features that are available on the device. When it comes to device connectivity, feature phones6 dominate the connected device5 footprint of most developing markets, especially evident across Africa. Smartphones are finding their way into markets with the shipments of devices into the hundreds of thousands on a quarterly basis. However as advertising is a numbers game, where does that leave advertisers who are looking to take advantage