Mobile ads 'ten times more effective'

Mobile advertising is almost ten times more effective on young consumers than other forms of advertising, according to research released by mobile ad firm JumpTap.

On Thursday the firm announced the results of a study which it commissioned from Research and Analysis of Media (RAM), carried out over a sample group of 300 Swedish TeliaSonera mobile users.

RAM discovered that the impact of mobile advertising on the 16-24 age group was significant, with 9 per cent responding that they would likely make a purchase. This compares to a likelihood of 0 per cent on other forms of advertising. Female users also proved susceptible to the mobile medium, and are apparently twice as likely, at 15 per cent, to make a purchase following a mobile ad than any other kind.

The research also revealed a greater recall rate for brands advertising on mobile platforms. Although approximately one third of respondents had no familiarity with the advertisers beforehand, around 10 per cent of 16-24 year olds and 28 per cent of 45-79 year-olds stated they would seek out more information on a brand following a mobile ad. This compares to 0 per cent of the 16-24 age group and only 13 per cent of the 45-79 age group who would look for more information after seeing other advertisements.

The claims tally with those of ad funded MVNO Blyk, which has announced average advertising response rates of 29 per cent. Compared to other forms of mass market advertising, this figure is phenomenal, against a 0.5 per cent response rate for online advertising and 4.5 per cent from unprofiled SMS.

However, industry analyst and telecoms.com parent, Informa Telecoms & Media, recently warned that mobile advertising has yet to convince the big hitters. The analyst revealed that the majority of early adopter big brands are yet to transfer more than 0.5 per cent of their advertising budget onto mobile.

But while this is in part down to the much maligned issues of non-existent measurement and premium pricing associated with early formats of mobile advertising, the analyst argues that these are short term hurdles and forecasts that the global mobile advertising market will rocket from $1.72bn in 2008 to $12.09bn by 2013.