Budgets for mobile marketing will get bigger next year, according to a new study run by Strongmail and presented by eMarketer.
The study in question suggests that 70% of marketers will ramp up their mobile budgets in 2013.
“A lot of brands have spent far too much money on mobile applications,” Scott Forshay, a mobile and emerging technology strategist for emarketing company Acquity Group, tells Mashable.
The time for greater emphasis and financial backing on mobile marketing has finally come.
This year, mobile ad spending in the U.S. is expected to reach $2.6 billion. That includes spending on display, search and messaging-based formats. And another estimate shows mobile advertising on smartphones will be a $5.04 billion industry by 2015.
“Of that $2.6 billion spent, $2.5 [billion] of that was probably wasted,” Forshay admits. “Probably the biggest error brands have made as they venture into mobile is that they think mobile is the same thing they’re doing for the website, just down to a 4-inch form.”
“Mobile users are not tethered to a desktop. They need timely information to drive them into stores with positive purchase intent,” he says, adding that marketing on mobile devices “will need to be timely, personal and contextually relevant (people expect their phone to be customized to who they are), in order to work.”