The Rise of Mobile Marketing in 2010

Mobile marketing is on the rise as more people access the internet via their mobiles than via a PC. Nielsen Online has conducted a variety of surveys to provide us with greater insight into the rise of mobile marketing from the beginning to the end of 2010 and beyond. The following mobile marketing trends were discovered.

Mobile marketing statistics show that in 2008, around 7.3 million people accessed the internet via their mobile phones, while in 2010 this figure has increased by 25% to over 35 million. The studied showed Google to be the most popular site for those accessing the internet via a PC, while BBC News was the most visited site by those using mobile phones.

Unsurprisingly, the study further showed that the mobile marketing services were mostly used by a younger audience, so an SEM agency would be advised to target its campaigns to a younger audience. 25% of mobile net users are between the ages of 15 and 24, while this age group makes up just 16% of PC users. The age group of 55 years and up makes up 23% of PC users, and only 12% of mobile internet users.

The mobile marketing platform provides immediacy and functionality which is why news sites are the most popular sites visited, while the PC is used mainly for entertainment and ecommerce. As tariffs have become more affordable and handsets more user-friendly throughout 2010, so marketing campaigns have become geared more towards encouraging users to use their mobile phones to browse the net.

According to www.scribd.com, advertising spend for mobile marketing was just $1541 in 2006, increased to $10,300 in 2010 and is projected at $13,862 for 2011. As we can see, businesses are increasingly using mobile marketing strategies to engage with their intended audience.

What do these mobile marketing statistics mean for the search engines? Acquisitions and plenty of them. 2010 has seen Google acquire 26 companies, as well as made a number of investments. Of these 26 acquisitions, five are mobile- and five are social based. In an effort to remain the top contender, Google is combining social media with search in their mobile marketing strategy, and spent a record $750 million on Admob alone. It has recently acquired Zetawire, a startup that specialises in mobile payments.

After the success of its iPhone app, Bing has developed a Bing for Android Mobile app to complement this. With these apps, Bing hopes to become your default search engine from the first time you use the app on your mobile. By monitoring search marketing on mobiles, Bing has concluded that 53% of mobile searches have local intent. By using this information to provide users with relevant information, Bing hopes to remain the preferred search engine on your mobile. Bing poses a huge threat to Google’s search market share. As Bing makes itself more accessible and attractive to mobile users, and supports more search products from other web services, so it will gain popularity and become an even bigger competitor to Google.

As the world demands faster access information, so mobile marketing companies and search marketing specialists need to work harder to satisfy this desire. We have already seen how mobile use and mobile advertising spend have increased over the past few years, and the projected increase of this; as well as the acquisitions made by the larger search engines in the hope of capitalising on the mobile marketing platform. With the rise in popularity of smart phones and their functionality, the mobile marketing industry has a considerably larger playground in which to direct their campaigns. Mobile marketing is already much bigger than anticipated and it looks set to continue growing at an unprecedented rate over the next few years.