Mobile ad spend now bigger than desktop
Arecent study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau in the UK and PricewaterhouseCoopers confirms that firms are now, for the first time, spending more money on mobile adverts than they are on desktop browser ads.
The study conducted to analyse the growth of key digital ad formats shows that firms today are spending about 36 per cent of their digital advertising budget on smartphone — nine times what it was five years ago.
Just in the UK, for instance, the total spent on mobile display ads in the first half of the year was about $980 million while the collective spent on PC and tablet display ads was $930 million.
It was also noted that the fastest growing ad format for the first half of 2016 are video adverts on mobileswhich saw a rise of a massive 129 per cent.
This change in ad spending reflects how users engage with gadgets. Tech users use their smartphones more than their computers now – more than 75 per cent of UAE’s population, for instance, is a mobile user today. The UAE also tops the list of GCC countries in advertising spending and, according to GoGulf, mobile display advertising for smartphones in the UAE is expected to increase at rates varying from 40-50 per cent yearly in the coming years.
“The wider range of activities and the longer time people spend on mobiles is why companies are raising the advertising budgets devoted to them,” says Poonam Jangir, a social media consultant for a UAE-based advertising agency.
“It’s also a more effective way for advertisers to deliver more relevant and immediate offers such as those related to certain locations or time of day.”
Experts believe that the reason there had been a gap between consumer media consumption on mobile
the wider range of activities and the longer time people spend on mobiles is why companies are raising the advertising budgets devoted to them
Poonam Jangir, social media consultant
and advertisers’ spending habits all this while was because of the perception that conversions cannot be tracked on mobiles.
As methods to track post click conversions on mobile environments through vendors that specialize in cross-device identification increase in popularity, advertisers are becoming more empowered into buying in a screen agonistic way and putting the audience at the heart of their plans.
“I think marketers in general are also devoting more ad spend to mobile as they are recognizing that people essentially carry an ad platform with them wherever they are,” Jangir added. Rabiya Shabeeh is a freelance writer based in Dubai.