Mobile Advertising Growth Fueled by New Ad Formats on Smartphones

A survey commissioned by mobile social networking provider, Brightkite has found that 38% of US mobile phone owners recall seeing advertising on their cell phones in the first quarter of 2009, although for Smartphone users, the recall rate jumped to 59%.

The survey, carried out by GfK Technology noted that for Smartphone users, the number one format is mobile web advertising, while for regular phone users, it is SMS. However, perhaps the most striking finding of this report is the increased breadth of mobile advertising formats that consumers are noticing. 23% of Smartphone users recall seeing SMS advertising, but 20% saw ads in mobile social networks and 15% saw ads in mobile TV/video. In just three months, the number of Smartphone users seeing ads inside a location-based network has almost tripled to 15%.

In addition to being more aware of mobile advertising, phone users are quickly adopting a much broader set of mobile services:

• 14% now use one or more location based services (peaking at 38% of iPhone users).
• 10% use a mobile social network (33% of iPhone users).
• The fastest growing application for iPhone users is games, which experiences a 21% growth quarter over quarter; 50% of iPhone owners are now playing games on their phone.

"Over the last few years, we've tracked the growth of mobile advertising, and this has been fueled by text messaging and mobile Internet formats. Now we are seeing consumers adopting a much broader set of mobile applications and services and this is exposing them to new ad formats," explained Jonathon Linner, Brightkite's CEO. "It's fascinating to see that iPhone users are almost as likely to see ads in a mobile social network as they are in a text message. This was unthinkable 12 months ago."

"If the iPhone is an indicator of future behavior across other handsets, then we would conclude that the former ‘standards' of mobile advertising – WAP and SMS – are going to be caught up to and perhaps surpassed by ads inside of other applications and services," says Colin Strong, head of Mobile Communications Research at GfK Technology.

Posted to the site on 14th May 2009