Mobile phone ad adoption hit by agency inertia

Leap from print to the small screen proving difficult

Britain’s ad agencies are still loath to invest in mobile phone ads despite traditional print media proving increasingly less attractive. That’s the conclusion drawn from new research out today [24th September 2012] from the Association of Online Publishers whose members blame “agency attitude” towards mobile ad campaigns.
In what’s seen as a worrying trend, 87 per cent of AOP respondents revealed how they now receive more than a fifth of their traffic via mobile yet less than 29 per cent receive more than a fifth of ad revenue from mobile sources. The association’s members report concern about how to reach people on a smaller screen, a concern that’s heightened by increasingly lower revenues from traditional print media as the circulations of newspapers and magazines generally decline.

Of equal concern is the wide fragmentation found in mobile devices where different handsets, operating systems and technology is deemed to be affecting the growth of digital advertising.

AOP’s research nevertheless comes as mobile advertising is still perceived as the world’s fastest-growing marketing platform, with global agencies such as WPP and Omnicom making big-buck acquisitions of digital firms recently.