M for mobile: Why advertisers are all for mobile advertising

Advertisers go where people hang out, because it’s just the way to go for those who are in the business. For a brand to succeed in today’s digital age, going online is a must—not to mention, spending on Internet ads that especially appear on mobile platforms.

It is as simple as this: Because most people now use their mobile phones to access the Internet, advertisers realized that they won’t be going anywhere if they stick to the usual web ads. Add to this the growing insistence of brands that they have to be accessible via mobile phones, too, simply because their loyal consumers have been there since time immemorial.

Back in the day, the amount spent on mobile advertising was quite infinitesimal, especially if compared with TV and radio advertising. Moreover, rarely do brands create a mobile version of an ad made for a website designed for desktop viewing, since only a few websites were actually mobile-ready back then.

But when smartphones and tablets became the next big thing, a lot of desktop-designated ads became unsuitable for viewing on mobile gadgets. Most regular Internet ads are incompatible with most smartphones’ mobile interface.

Little by little, things changed to an extent that consumers’ buying philosophy became highly mobile-dependent. The e-commerce phenomenon has become big, but its immensity has become larger-than-life only when it went mobile.

Consumers browse, canvass, compare, purchase, and trade more often on the Internet these days. (Source)

Now, the gap between the amount of money spent on online advertising and the amount of time users spent on gadgets have also decreased dramatically. BI Intelligence says it is substantially narrowing down because of mobile ad optimization’s emergence. In other words, online advertising experts have gone enthusiastic over perfecting targeting methods and discovering more optimization techniques that would polish the still-inchoate mobile advertising.

Advertisers are slowly seeing the importance of mobile ad optimization in crafting successful mobile advertising campaigns. Software programming service firms now include mobile application technologies which headline their list of services, giving it high importance and substantial attention. And how could not it be possible, especially now that most online advertisements are generated by giant online media brands like Google and Facebook?

In fact, Google and Facebook are dominating the mobile advertising industry. They now control 66.8 percent of US mobile ad market, the largest in the world today. Since 2013, the global mobile advertising industry increased more than 200 percent to almost $18 billion, and is set to grow up to more than 75 percent this year. Other giant mobile advertisers are Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Amazon.

It was also in 2013 when US advertising revenues surpassed TV advertising for the first time, a trend that is continuously dictating the entire advertising world today. More and more brands are spending more money on mobile ads and less on expensive TV network ads. It also helped that TV producers and networks themselves use Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to promote their respective shows, making social media a lucrative avenue for marketing and promotion.

There is no other route for online advertising but mobile. According to eMarketer, mobile advertising will account for the unstoppable growth of the global ad market starting 2015 through 2018. A staggering $118 billion of $150 billion-worth global ad projection will come from mobile as a result of continuous improvements in the smartphone market and online advertising segment.

Desktop ads, however, won’t die anytime soon. But it would shortly bow down to mobile ads completely by 2017. Although the United States will still be the ringleader of mobile advertising industry by that time at $83 billion, China will significantly grow by a confounding $57.2 billion in mobile ad spend alone.