Mobile Spending

A new study by Flurry, a mobile advertising and analytics firm, states that mobile is the most imbalanced medium when it comes to ad spending versus time spent, at 1% compared to 23%. By contrast, print gets 29% of ad dollars but only 6% of time spent. So why is mobile getting short-changed in ad budgets? “We believe the main reason for this disparity is that the mobile app platform has emerged so rapidly over such a short period of time. With the iOS and Android app economy only three-and-half years old, Madison Avenue and brands have yet to adjust to an unprecedented adoption of apps by consumers,” stated Peter Farago, VP, marketing at Flurry.

Research by Flurry shows that iOS and Android smart devices have seen twice the growth rate as that of Internet adoption and four times that of PC adoption. If mobile follows the same pattern as the desktop Web, that disparity between ad dollars spent and time spent should shrink over time as the audience grows and the metrics and practices around mobile advertising become standardized. But since mobile is inherently more fragmented than the Web, and offers an even smaller screen to advertisers, there may always be a sizeable gap between spending and time spent.

“What bodes best for the outlook of mobile advertising is the quality and quantity of the audience that not only uses smartphones and tablets, but also interacts with ads on these devices,” according to Farago. Sounds simple, right? But the same arguments are still being made by online ad proponents to get Madison Avenue to spend more on the Internet.