UK Mobile Ad Spending doubled in 2008, expect ripple effects globally

While the USA is the biggest ad market and New Yok City's Madison Avenue is considered the epicenter of the global ad industry, the second most influential city is then London and even where New Yorkers tend to think nothing outside of the Big Apple really matters, they do track whats happenin' in London (and Tokyo too). So this news bomb from the UK is big news in the ad industry. The IAD (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers reports that the UK spending on mobile advertising doubled in 2008. The story is reported in Mobi Ad News.

This has very big impacts to the media industries in general, and advertising in particular. The obvious big growth opportunity in advertising has been internet advertising (which now accounts for about 10% of the total global ad spending) and which has recently been devastating legacy mass media ad spending, with TV and magazines hard hit and newspapers really struggling. But mobile was a tiny sliver of all interactive ads and represented only about 1% of the total global ad spending last year.

Now a leading European market, and from the advertising creative angle, one of the most prestigious global advertising centres, London, is seeing advertising on mobile to double in one year. Wow. And this in a year when we hit a bad global recession and many ad budgets wre slashed.

I would draw three important inferences from the UK numbers. First, that where Britain goes in media, mobile and advertising, Europe follows. So expect the national mobile ad spending numbers in advanced European mobile markets to echo UK numbers (I'm talking about Spain, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Ireland etc) and the more laggard European markets to soon follow in this trend (like Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland etc) 

Secondly, I expect the Americans want to learn from this. What is it that so new, cool and - commerically effective - that the cellphone based ads have seen such a big growth in Britain. Expect many of the big global agencies like the Saatchis and Ogilvys etc to have big pow-wows with their London office mAd people briefing their Manhattan colleagues on what is now hot and successful. This should produce rapid learning and a transference of the skills and knowhow into the US market. Note that if you are the account exec for a major advertiser like American Express or Ford or Pizza Hut in New York, and find that your client is unwilling to spend as much this year in TV and print, and even perhaps internet advertising spending is near a plateau, and then you hear that in Britain they are doubling the expenditure in cellphone ads, you will want to know why (and what kind of ads). Follow the money.

Third, I would expect the rest of the world to follow this trend with a delay. Obviously there are plenty of markets where mobile advertising is far more advanced than in Britain, either in the types of ads, as well as in the proportion of the national ad spending. Japan, South Korea are obvious global leaders on this (and as we've said many times, Spain is well ahead of Britain, as Europe's most advanced mobile advertising market. But there are also surprising countries where the proportion of national ad spending on mobile is far ahead of that in the US and UK - India for example. In India the reach of internet based interactive ads is very limited, so from very early on, the Indian ad industry has reached for the mobile as an interactive channel and India has been very big for example in developing advergames for mobile.

We do know that the US economy actually shrunk in 2008. Several other major economies also had negative growth last year. Advertising spending is very strongly linked to the economic cycles. When times are good, all companies advertise a lot - and need to advertise even more because of the "noise" of so many ads around. When times are bad, all advertisers cut down and even those who remain, don't need to do nearly as much to be seen, because the overall clutter of ads is cut down so much. In that context to find that UK advertising spending on mobile phones doubled, is big news. And now we'll need to monitor the overall global numbers as they come in. Expect globally ad spending on mobile to at least grow by 50% in 2008.

Finally, some more info. As is our custom here at the Communities Dominate blog, we offfer you more. I released my seventh book in January Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 1: Mobile Advertising, with 50 case studies of excellence in mobile advertising from 19 countries around the world. The 171 page eBook has been very warmly received withh countless endorsements. You can sample many pages and severla case studies at the info page for the eBook (which is also the only place where you can buy that eBook, it is not available, and won't become available at Amazon or other booksellers). Check it out at Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 1: Mobile Advertising.

Comments

[moncler doudoune]

Ban on women driving should be considered world wide... :-) I would never allow my wife driving my car.. :-)

[ノースフェイス]

津の4町を含む全羅経済貿易地帯では、男性のパイオニアは、まだ中国吉林省琿春市に隣接して豆満江です。吉林省、中国、行くためにツアーグループとの毎日の延辺朝鮮族自治州。

[グッチ]

もともと店舗前の道路は数十年前に決まった都市計画に基づく拡幅計画の対象。同商店街では約１０メートルの道路幅を１６～１７メートルに広げるが、震災前に着工の見通しは立っていなかった。しかし市は昨年１２月になって「道路拡幅は災害に強いまちづくりに必要」と計画を進める意向を示し、住民説明会を始めた。