Mobile advertising spend continues to gain an increasing share from advertisers as businesses realise the potential one on one time mobile marketing can give. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) showed in their third annual mobile study, that mobile advertising in the United Kingdom has experienced a 116% year on year growth, up from 32% growth in 2009.

Smartphone adoption is not the only force behind the growth in spend, demonstrating the change of mobile usage behaviour. Mobile marketing offers excellent targeting capabilities and can work extremely well for location based advertising campaigns, which have the potential to deliver a high ROI. Mobile marketing offers a variety of ways to connect including SMS (text messaging), the mobile web and in-app advertising.

SMS Marketing

SMS has become one of the most popular methods of communicating. Consumers always have their mobile phone with them, so if you want to engage with people when they aren’t at their computer it’s the best way.

Although all you hear about is app marketing 87% of people use SMS versus only 8% of people who use apps, although this figure is increasing rapidly all the time. SMS is a good way to reach consumers with time-sensitive messages, as you are almost guaranteed to be read.

Mobile Web

When it comes to the mobile web search continues to dominate advertising spends with a market share of 66%, whilst display advertising (banners and text) have a market share of 29%, with other ad formats making up the 5%.

Click through rates on mobile search are on average 2.7 times as much as desktop search CTR, though this varies between sectors. It can be as much as five times desktop CTR. These CTR rates could be due to less competition for clicks as it is fairly new. Mobile search also offers the opportunity to click to call which can put customers directly through to your business when they need you.

Mobile App Marketing

The apps market is growing at an alarming rate and will be worth an estimated $24bn by 2012. Mobile app marketing can deliver campaigns which engage consumers with rich media. There are many options available including placing ads on the loading screen and home screen of apps, as well as using expandable banners.

Your in app advertising can click through to external websites and WAP sites, videos, photo galleries or mobile commerce sites.