A new report by ABI Research has determined that the Asia Pacific region will lead the world in mobile marketing spend within the next 2-3 years.
Out of the overall global figure of $16 billion being spent on mobile marketing efforts, nearly half – or $7.7 billion – will be spent in the Asia Pacific region alone. It’s been no secret that Asian countries lead the world in mobile technology in general, but seeing such high numbers in regards to mobile marketing is still surprising if you ask me.
A large part of the equation is the fact that most broadband-enabled countries like Japan and South Korea have successfully integrated mobile and the Internet, and done so on a very large scale. This high level of mobile advancement has also meant that things like SMS text messaging, downloading of ad supported games and applications, as well as the mobile Web have been adopted widely and quickly by its consumers. People learned to use these services and rapidly built them into their lifestyles.
Mobile marketing demands a new way of thinking about ad-campaigns when it comes to consumers, and those in Asian countries are already immersed in new mobile technologies and have been utilizing them for much longer than in other countries. This makes for a very desirable audience for brands wanting to utilize mobile in their ad-campaigns, thus spending much more of their budgets on mobile.
The Asia Pacific region will undoubtedly become the testing ground for several mobile marketing methods that, if successful, will make their way into other parts of the world. Things like mobile barcodes, image recognition and other new-age mobile technologies have already been widely successful in countries like Japan and South Korea, and are just now making their way to North America and other parts of the world.
