Advertisers want to be everywhere that a consumer might be. Reuters reports that mobile ad firms are seeing a sharp rise in advertisers that are taking advantage of mobile ads and working them into their marketing campaigns. Mobile devices are a tantalizing place for advertisers to offer content thanks to the fact that many of the current devices know where the user is and response rates to ads targeted based on the users' interests and location are said to be very good.
2011 may be the year that mobile advertising really takes off with adoption rates soaring. Poynt CEO Andrew Osis told Reuters, "Across our markets we are getting this fall messages from advertisers that for 2011 they have created separate mobile budgets."
Poynt produces a local search application that has about 34.5 million users in Europe and North American reports. The number of advertisers taking advantage of mobile ads are still small compared to the online world, but the growth of the market is clear and impressive.
The mobile advertising market in the U.S. alone is set to grow by 2015 to $5 billion compared to the $800 million the market is worth this year. As the mobile ad market starts to grow, we can bet more large companies will enter the market with ads and even buy or start their own mobile ad networks. Apple purchased mobile advertising firm Quattro Wireless to get its own foothold in the mobile advertising space.
One key reason for the sudden increase of the mobile advertising market by advertisers is that the mobile market is increasingly populated by highly capable devices like smartphones and tablets.
Egyptian firm Mobinil says that so far 200,000 clients have signed up for its mobile ad program. The company notes that some of the firms are seeing response rates as high as 35% and major companies like Adidas and Nokia are among the advertisers.
